


Wrap around me

by eledae



Series: Hivesong [1]
Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Kiss, Ghost Hunters, M/M, Magic, Pining, Swearing, The other members are cameos, Yungi-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25603300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eledae/pseuds/eledae
Summary: Four years ago, rookie ghost-hunter Jeong Yunho barely managed to escape the corrupt court of Hivesong. He never knew why his beloved mess of a best friend chose to stay behind; all he knows is that Song Mingi, court poet and human trashfire, is no longer a part of his life.Now Mingi’s said the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person and one of his (scarily long) list of enemies has set a predatory ghost on his tail. He’s got no clue who paid for the haunting that's slowly taking him apart each night... but there's one long-lost friend he hopes might still care just enough to save his ass.
Relationships: Jeong Yunho/Song Mingi
Series: Hivesong [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1855714
Comments: 32
Kudos: 77





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by [SinisterSound](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinisterSound/pseuds/SinisterSound)’s lovely Woosang witch!au [Let’s Be Alone Together](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22895542) to create a fantasy romance encounter story generator (it was super high tech guys - strips of scrap paper in three plastic cups). The first prompt I pulled was ‘Tenacious, inexperienced ghost-hunter meets honest disgraced poet’. One good long walk in lockdown and a LOT of writing brought me here!
> 
> Warning: this is a ghost story, and the ghost did not die quiet. There's some speculation as to her circumstances of death but not a lot of explicit violence. No sexual violence. Please feel free to get in touch ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/nelliedae)) if you need to check more before reading. The Teen & Up rating is mainly for the swearing littered all over everything like nasty confetti.
> 
> This is my first finished story and first fic ever, so I really hope you enjoy! I couldn’t have done it without the encouragement & freakishly insightful questions of stellar writer [undeliveredtruth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/undeliveredtruth/pseuds/undeliveredtruth) so a million thanks :)))) 
> 
> Should you care about such things, this story has a soundtrack that includes Aurora and some kiwi tracks amongst others. Hit me up for a playlist if you want!

The shop door opens, letting in a burst of mid-morning noise from the street outside. Birds, the rattle of carriages passing, a loud argument somewhere nearby. Tucked away in the workroom behind a makeshift curtain, Yunho doesn’t look up from the piece of wire he’s using to ink runes on a scrap of white cloth. A tiny line of sweat itches his eyebrow and he swipes it away with his arm. His apprentice Jongho will see to the customer. 

Chances are, they’ll be after a cut-price ghost ward. He’s priced them low deliberately, cheaper than their competitors. Wards are their bread and butter right now, all that’s keeping their little shop afloat until something bigger comes in. 

He plays a game with himself every day. If he can get the stack of finished wards to be higher than the stack of invoices mounting up on his desk, he’s winning. 

So far today, he’s losing. 

He rolls his shoulders, flexes his wrists back and forth, waves cramps out of his fingers. Three wards, three more working wards and he’ll take a break.

He hears his apprentice’s polite tones, smiles to himself at the well-veiled irritation that hopefully only he can hear. Jongho hates being interrupted from his studies. He knows they need the business, but he’s probably got his hand shoved impatiently into his pile of study notes, marking his place. 

The customer answers in a low voice. Jongho’s chair pushes out with an aggrieved squeak. Must be important, he’s getting up.

The apprentice appears around the curtain hiding away their tiny workroom and waits for him to seal off the rune he’s working on. When Yunho looks up, Jongho pitches his voice quiet.

“This guy wants to see a hunter. He doesn’t have an appointment, though, you want to take it anyway? It’s weird, he looks court, all fancy-ass clothes, but no mask.”

His heart kicks up a notch, the way it always does when it comes to the court. They have history, him and Hivesong. Not all good. Not even mostly all good.

But someone looking for a hunter is great. A customer from Hivesong could be the injection of coin and reputation that keeps them going past their first year. Now that the Old King is gone, it’s safer to do business with the court and the Lakesiders. Not entirely safe, but safer.

A little warning voice whispers, _yeah, but why would someone from Hivesong come here, across the lake to Lowtown_? To the ass-end of town, to a couple of nobodies? He wonders, not quite idly, if he knows them. No court mask in Lowtown. That’s… unusual.

“What does he look like?”

“Big guy, young. Face kind of pointy-looking. Fell onto the couch like he already owns our business and he’s trying to decide whether to sell or not.” Jongho’s radiating disapproval. “Covered in ghost-sign, though, so not just a tourist.”

Surely not. The coincidence would be a bitch. He’s usually luckier than that.

Yunho tosses the half-made ward into a drawer and comes to take a look past the edge of the curtain. He realizes too late he’s just wiped blood-ink on the hem of his white shirt. Good look, rookie.

Jongho is weirdly old-fashioned for such a young guy. He likes to hang out with a conservative crowd and tends to steer clear of the tales of mayhem and debauchery flowing from Hivesong like shit out of a sewer pipe. Even so, Yunho can’t quite believe he didn’t recognize the man lounging low on their beat-up couch. 

Song Mingi. It’s Song fucking Mingi in his shop. 

Hivesong’s most famous poet. Youngest ever member of the royal council.

Yunho’s oldest friend. Once upon a very long time ago.

Four years since he last saw him, and his old friend is looking… good. He’s grown into his sharp features, rangy height filled out. He’s all elegant angles in his long peacock blue coat, even with Lowtown mud spattered across his boots and generic shop-bought wards pinned to his collar. The glamour he’s wearing streaks his dark hair with the colours of an oil slick, all blues and greens and pinks. 

He’s seen the court poet from a distance over the past years, like everyone else in Lowtown - well, everyone apart from Jongho. His poetry performances are epic, savage. But they haven’t seen each other, talked to each other, since the night Yunho escaped Hivesong. He hasn’t been closer to Mingi than being one more distant drunk and admiring face in a crowd at a performance.

He’d sent Mingi a letter, once, when the Old King died, a couple of years back. It got returned unopened. Like the court just swallowed him up, and all those years of friendship… gone like a dream. But here he is. Old buddy, old pal, Song Mingi. Only a few years too late.

He ducks back behind the curtain. The tiny workroom suddenly feels several sizes tinier. _Breathe, Yunho. Just breathe._

“Show him in and get us something to drink, okay?”

He pretends to ignore the curious glance Jongho shoots him as he goes back into the shop.

Funny how he didn’t notice what a trash heap the workroom was, until now. He has to fight the urge to shove piles of papers into drawers. The shelves are full of scraps for making wards; parchment and wire and cloth and ribbon, bottles of blood-ink. Books covered in Jongho’s practice runes lie scattered across the other desk. 

There’s even less space in the room once Mingi brushes through the curtain and takes a seat across from him. Less space, and maybe less air.

Close to, the poet doesn’t look amazing, he just looks tired. His complexion is muddy under smoothly applied makeup, with dark smudges under his eyes. He remembers the rumors that Mingi is out of favour with Queen and court right now. How he’s said something so unforgivable that he’s one step away from being thrown out of Hivesong entirely.

That smile, though. He knows that smile. Three quarters bullshit cockiness, watered down only slightly with wariness, like he’s not sure of his welcome but is going to try charming his way forwards regardless. It’s the way Mingi used to look at strangers, the ones he wasn’t sure he liked yet. Never thought he’d see it directed at him.

Yunho ends up awkwardly holding out his hand to shake, but Mingi raises a right hand wrapped in bandages.

“The ghost broke my fingers.”

Yunho slides into his second sight without thinking, looking for the answers that he can only get from the poet’s aura.

He’d forgotten, _great hells,_ how had he forgotten. This aura. The intense, rich colours, deepest reds shading into purple, like a garden of hibiscus blooming around Mingi. It almost stops his heart. 

It feels so much like home, and that’s just all types of bad. He stopped thinking of the court as home years ago.

Focus on the job. Yeah, yes, there it is. The frayed tatter, the lacework of wrongness eating at the edges of his aura. Like the colour sucked out of a sugar candy, sickly pale. The damage is clustered over his injured hand, over his heart, over his throat.

Jongho’s right. He’s haunted.

Despite everything, his hands itch to explore that damaged aura in more detail, to see what he can learn from it. It’s like he can understand the colours better when they’re under his fingertips. There’s a scrap of wire on his desk and he fidgets with it instead, letting the aura-sight slide away and the sunset ripple of colour retreat. It’s too distracting. 

The curtain sways as Jongho brings in a tray of apple tea for them both. He’s brought out their nicest glasses, the etched green ones that actually match, a present from his mother when he opened the business. All Yunho can see is the chip out of the edge of the tray, and the way the tea is too cloudy and not that clear rose-gold like they make it at the stalls. 

He wraps both hands around the warm glass, feeling like a kid. 

“It’s been a while,” he says. _It’s good to see you,_ sits unspoken on his tongue. He’s not actually sure it would be true. _You saved our lives and then you left me._ That’s there, too. “You’re looking for a hunter?”

At least his voice sounds like an adult. A professional. Yeah, you’re smooth, Yunho.

“Right to business, huh?” Mingi looks so assured, almost relaxed, as if the tatters in his aura and the bandage around his hand aren’t even there. 

He aims for the same light tone. “Something’s haunting you.” 

“I sure as hell didn’t break my own fingers. Well, technically I did, but she was running the show when I did it. That’s what I get for trying to sleep.” Mingi tosses back the apple tea and plunks the glass back on the table. “Okay, straight to business it is.”

“Hold on, before you start. I have to ask.” He’s going to kick himself - Jongho may kick him, which is more of a threat - but he needs to know. He doesn’t trust this windfall, lovely as it may be. Lovely from a business sense, that is. It just doesn’t add up in any way he feels good about.

“Why come to us? Why aren’t you taking this to the court hunters?”

Queen Soyeon has her own corps of hunters; they’re fearsome and legendary. Inked head to toe in the best runes money can buy, years of experience between them. Hivesong’s history is so violent and ghost-ridden that they have nothing but the best on tap.

“You may have heard, I’m not exactly flavour of the month there, at the moment.” Mingi picks up his empty glass and rolls it in his hand. “I did ask a couple of them, I won’t lie. They turned me down.”

“They’re willing to walk away from a serious haunting? They didn’t even ward you properly?” 

The wards Yunho makes are cheap, but they’re as strong and specific as he can make them, and Mingi’s here facing this thing with the shittiest, most shallow ghost wards on his coat. Ten to one he bought them at a street stall.

“I think they’re more worried about pissing off the person who sent the ghost.”

A cool thread of fear mingled with interest edges down Yunho’s back. 

“You think someone sent the ghost? This isn’t just a chance haunting?” Bound ghost are rare for a reason; it takes a seriously fucked-up piece of runework to bind a ghost to a living target. Which means that someone’s hired a nyx, a runeworker whose craft is completely illegal. “What makes you think it’s a bound ghost?”

“She knows my name. That’s not normal, right? She can’t talk too well, her voice is pretty messed up, but she calls me by name. At night. I usually… I hear her before I see her.” 

Mingi’s long fingers pick at the etching on the green glass. Yunho can’t help it; he lets the aura-sight slide back. Can’t get much by way of emotion from auras, not unless you know someone really well. He finds with a grim satisfaction that he’s remembering how to read Mingi’s aura well enough. Just like picking up a childhood storybook, where the pictures still bring back those old familiar feelings.

Even without concentrating on it, he can see the poet’s aura crackling at the edges. Mingi’s not just tired. He’s terrified. You wouldn’t see it on his face, but it’s in his aura. 

“She’s been following me. I’ve started to see her everywhere, whenever I’m alone. A month ago, that wouldn’t have been a problem. I was never alone. But now… I’ve got a lot more alone time on my hands.” 

His smile is casual but the aura flares again. Fear.

“I’ve been trying to stay awake, and the one time I fell asleep, she got into my head. She took over my fucking body while I was asleep, and made me break my own fingers. I can’t keep staying awake forever.”

“I can give you a ward against possession, should stop her getting in. But are you saying that you think somebody at court hired someone to do this, bind a ghost to you?”

He nods. “I don’t know who, yet. I’m working on it. The short list is… not that short, honestly.”

“You think the Queen would let this happen under her roof? You really can’t go to her with this?”

Former Crown Princess Soyeon always used to have her own hard-ass version of a soft spot for Mingi. Like a tiny weakening in that cast-iron armour. 

“Let’s just say, my list of potential enemies runs right to the top of the food chain. You probably heard the stories?” His expression tells Yunho he’s well aware his situation is of his own making. There’s a bitter curl to his lips. “Surprising, I know. I ran my mouth, and I was stupid enough to think the bright light of the truth was enough protection. Turns out, people aren’t big fans of the truth.” He shrugs. “The Queen may look more kindly on the person who sent this ghost than on me, right now.”

“Okay, so you can’t take this job to the court hunters or the Queen, I get it.” 

This next bit hurts, but he has to know. Mingi’s been honest - well, probably been as honest as he can. Maybe. Yunho wants to return the favour. No pretending to be something he’s not. 

“Look around you. We’re not quite third tier hunters, even for Lowtown. We’re going to be good one day, Jongho’s going to be so strong it makes me weep happy tears, but the paint on the sign’s practically still wet. I know we’ve got history, you and me, but why us?” 

_Why me?_

Mingi’s answering smile is crooked. “So many reasons, Yunho. And you’re guaranteed not to like a single one of them.”

Hearing his name in that voice is good. Bad. Something. Definitely something.

“First off, you won’t ever be able to boast about this job. Even if it turns out the throne isn’t behind it, someone powerful is. And they’re not going to be pleased you helped me. This job is far more likely to trash your reputation than make it, if word gets out at court. But you’re new, so you’ve got no reputation to break.”

He doesn’t say, _you desperately need the money_ , but he might as well. It’s clearly true.

“Which brings me to reason two. Everyone lost sight of you when you left Hivesong. They’re not going to pick you for a hunter. You’re cute, squeaky clean. No tattoos.”

Yunho blinks at ‘cute’. “No _visible_ tattoos.” 

He got the first runemark after graduation, right over his heart, most important place for a hunter’s protection. He’s not licensed without it.

Mingi’s brow quirks. “Nice. Okay. But it means we might get away with it.”

“Away with what, exactly?”

“Pretending you’re not a hunter. You’re just some hook-up, staying the night. That’s reason three. They know I’m desperate enough not to be alone right now, and even if they recognize you, they’ll know we were close. Once. They’ll buy it.”

The room suddenly feels an extra size too small for them both. “You want me to pretend to be, what, a long-lost lover?”

“I was thinking more casual, but something like that. Honestly? It’s the only way I can think of to do this without it escalating on me. Right now, they’re having fun watching me freak out. Small stuff, like this.” He waves his bandaged hand. “It’s getting stronger, but they’re taking it slow. They know I spend a lot of time in the Lowtown. It’s not going to surprise them if I turn up with someone like you in tow. And you take out the ghost before they realise I’m doing something about it.”

Don’t ask, Yunho. You really don’t want to know. But he has to ask.

“Someone like me?”

Mingi’s unbandaged hand comes up with gesture like exploding fireworks, and there’s a world of cynicism in it. It feels like self-mockery, and it isn’t gentle. 

“Starry-eyed. The look on your face, when I walked in. You look at me like that there, nobody’s going to guess you’re a hunter. You’ll just be someone else who ran away from the court and jumped at any chance to get back in, no matter how desperate.”

Yunho nods slowly, but it’s not agreement. He’s just buying time, trying to figure out how to feel about this. He knows Mingi can’t see auras - the second sight is pretty rare - but he feels like something private has been raided, even so. _The look on your face._ I’m such an idiot.

“So you need someone easy to overlook. An adoring fanboy, too starstruck to care that you’re no longer the next big thing at court.”

Mingi’s voice is surprisingly intense. “I need a hunter. I need someone who can stop this thing. I asked around, and yeah, I was looking for someone new, without a reputation to fuck up, someone who’d need the work badly enough to help me out. Your name came up, and I thought I’d try asking you. But what I really need right now is someone who knows what they’re doing.” 

His aura is jagged with fear, and fading hope. That bright, confident, arrogant face that gives nothing away, and behind it, the static of fear. 

“This thing is taking me apart, piece by piece. And they say you’re crazy good for someone just starting out.” 

Mingi’s fear makes Yunho find a last reserve of gentleness. “Maybe you should have led with that.”

Mingi huffs a surprised laugh. “Yeah, I probably should have. I’m sorry. You’re not seeing me at my best. You may not remember, but I can be charming.”

“Probably why you’ve got so many friends at court.”

It’s the first recognizable smile he’s seen from him. Not defensive, not cynical, just a brief flash of genuine humour. There, and then gone. “Yeah, you know me. I’m just - not looking forward to tonight. She’s worse at night. And I’m glad, if I have to ask for help, that it’s you. For what it’s worth. Speaking of which.” 

He pulls a coin pouch from inside his coat and drops it on the desk. “I asked about the going rate for a bound ghost. I know there’s more risk. For both of us.”

Yunho picks up the pouch, feeling the solid slide of serious coinage. Probably silver. Too heavy for copper, anyway. “Here I was thinking you were offering to pay me with the pleasure of your company.”

Mingi grins again, broad and gorgeous. “For a starry-eyed hook-up, that glow’s worn off pretty fast, huh?”

Ignore that treacherous feeling of warmth, Yunho. Bury that away somewhere deep and dark and don’t take it out to look at it later.

“You know I’ve never caught a bound ghost, right? They’re rare. I know the theory, I’ve seen it done, but this would be my first time.” 

“Okay, but what do you think? Honestly? Can you do it?”

He gets the feeling Mingi could see through anything less than the truth, but he doesn’t need to lie, not about this. He’s spent the last few years studying all hours, working his ass off to get to this point, where he can finally prove himself against a real challenge.

Besides, the way he knows Mingi’s aura like the back of his hand is actually going to help him here, if he decides to do this. For the first time ever, the ridiculous amount of attention he’s paid to Song Mingi for much of his life will be worthwhile.

“Yes, I can. You can trust me with this.” He’s as sure of this as he ever has been about anything. 

_If I’m willing to take the chance._

From the front room, he can feel the poised and intent silence that is Jongho wanting him to take the work, to keep them afloat for another month. 

“Give me a moment. This isn’t just my decision.”

Jongho’s at his desk, surrounded by notes, but he’s not even making a pretense at studying. He’s been drawing nonsense symbols all over his papers while he listens in, not even pretending at runes. Yunho drops the coin pouch on the desk, letting the sound speak for itself.

Jongho raises his eyebrows. “Okay, obviously you’ve got thoughts, here.”

“We’re just starting out. We can’t afford enemies at court.”

Jongho shrugs. “We keep going like this, we can’t afford rent on this place, either.”

“I won’t be able to help with wards for a couple of days, even if this goes well.”

“And a bound ghost is dangerous, probably far too ambitious for someone just starting out.” Jongho all but rolls his eyes. “But I know you. You want to do this. How about you tell me why, instead? It’s not just the money, right?”

Yunho sees the telltale silvery gleam in Jongho’s eyes as he shifts into aura-sight, a not-very-discreet attempt to check out where his head’s at.

There are things he’s not about to say, not even to Jongho, who knows some of his history with Hivesong. 

About how he’s been in the crowd for every one of Mingi’s performances since he came back to live in Lowtown, even though he has to get drunk enough to go listen to him, every time.

How Mingi might be a trashfire of a human being, but his poems are funny and sweet, full of life and truth and beauty. 

Or how about, hey Jongho, when I was young and stupid and far from home, I used to make believe I could wrap that aura around me like a warm hug, after Mingi chose to stay behind in Hivesong. 

He can give Jongho part of the truth, anyway. 

“He saved my family once. He was the one who got us out of Hivesong.” 

He still doesn’t know if there was a price for that. But it’s not even that feeling that he owes Mingi, not really.

“You know what it is, though? He’s on his own. Nobody wants to help him, because it’s inconvenient, or the politics don’t add up.” He doesn’t realise his voice is rising until Jongho starts to make shushing hands. “The court’s a nest of vultures, and the vultures are winning. Fuck the vultures.”

He knows how that feels. Hivesong turning a blind eye while people bleed. No, not turning away. Circling, hunting for scraps they can pull from your body.

The apprentice weighs the pouch of coins in a practiced hand. He drops it into their lockbox and turns the key. “His money pays the bills. I say we take it, do the work, worry about our reputation later. We’re tough. We’ll figure it out.”

_____________

_“Interview the haunt victim in their own space. Strive for a neutral environment to allay the haunt victim’s natural fears. Ward the chosen space well in advance. Above all, keep a clear head.”_

_~ Handbook for the Novice Hunter_

Yunho hears the music and crowds around the Lakeside gates long before he sees them. As the sun gets lower in a last haze of late afternoon glory, everyone’s gathered to see who’s going to the party over the water, and what they’re wearing. For those not going across the lake - which is most of them - the party starts and ends here, at the top of Dock Hill. 

It’s the first night of Hivesong’s nectar season, so bees are a big theme. He sees stripes, gold body paint, more than a few giant phallic stingers bouncing around in the crowd. Musicians compete for attention with songs, pipes, guitars and one teeny tiny woman dressed head to toe in gold bells that she’s bawling along to in a surprisingly big voice.

He’s only just woken up from getting a few hours of sleep before the night’s work. He lets the crowd rush past him, lets the sounds wash over him, just keeps working his way slowly but surely to the iron gates that separate Lowtown from Lakeside. 

A hawker’s selling pork belly buns and he buys a couple, pocketing one and swallowing the other in a couple of hasty bites. He closes his eyes briefly at the sweet, spiced fumes coming from the mead stalls, inhales fondly, keeps walking. First law of ghost hunting, keep your head straight.

He’s dressed all in black tonight, like Mingi suggested. It’s the suit his mother saved up for, back when he registered as a hunter for the first time. He was worried at the time that he’d never get the chance to wear something so fancy again. Tonight though, it’s perfect. Lowtown boy on the make in a cheap suit that’s just a little too tight across the shoulders, eyes on warming a bed in Court and not much beyond that. 

Townie suit, sure. No mask. But he can do better than that, why not. It’s Hivesong, after all. Gotta do this right. 

He buys a cheap gilding glamour from a woman selling party fancies, something to put the softest glow on his cheeks and eyelids, a slick of gloss on his mouth.

Yunho wets his lips and presses them together to get used to the sticky honey taste of the glamour. This is for Hivesong, right. He’s definitely not thinking about Song Mingi. Fake hook-up. 

_Such an idiot._

The gate at the top of the hill is wreathed in crepe paper flowers with some sort of glamour that makes them glitter in the torchlight. Golden bees on wires give off a low spell-driven hum that harmonizes with a nearby musician’s ballad. It’s pretty, but not nearly pretty enough given what’s waiting for him on the other side.

Hivesong’s royal guard, the Magpies - known unlovingly as maggies by anyone who’s got too close for comfort - are prowling the docks, keeping order with their sheer potential for violence. They’re in metallic bird masks, mostly, with black and white suits cut so sharp they’re practically an extra weapon.

He remembers the maggies well.

Yunho waits at the gate until one of them looks his way.

Even hidden behind a black lacquered raven mask, the maggie looks unimpressed. Yunho finds himself subtly shifting his balance for defence, and tries to radiate wholesomeness instead. He had to leave his bone knife at home; there’s no way he’s getting a weapon into Hivesong. 

When he holds up the token Mingi gave him, he can see the maggie recalibrate. There’s a smirk. A glance up and down his suit.

The maggie pulls the gate open and waves him through with a bow just this side of mocking.

“Sir, please wait for the next available boat.”

Yunho sketches a bow in return, smiles like he’s harmless. A few people in the Lowtown crowd stare at him as he crosses the fenceline, and there’s some low laughter. Nobody he knows here, thank the gods. The gate clangs shut behind him.

There must be some sort of spell on the docks, because the sounds of the Lowtown party fade into a muffled silence as soon as the gate closes. He joins the small clusters of Lakesiders waiting on the docks in their costumes and masks, their haut glamours. 

There’s a silvery fog hanging over the water, growing more visible as the sun gets lower. Flowers float on the lake, wreathed with small golden lights that move from flower to flower, drifting like insects.

The little ferry boats are trimmed with flowers, too. He waits in line until a boat comes free, and steps aboard. There’s a hesitation when he gets in, a subtle drift away by the nearest Lakesiders. 

He ends up sitting between an unmasked Lowtown woman who stares off across the water for the whole trip, and a Lakeside woman in a geometric mirrored mask who watches him with dark, amused eyes. 

Hivesong rises slowly above them as they cross the lake. His old home, undeniably and heartbreakingly beautiful, tall slender stone towers and the deceptively delicate lacework of the golden palace at the heart of the Lakeside. 

It’s like a beast that has been biding its time, closing endlessly patient jaws on him once again. It’s just starting to bite down. The pressure’s not bad, yet. But it’s only just getting started. 

When they land the boat, he steps out onto the shingle lakeshore with the others. 

A servant in an iridescent beetle mask checks his token again with a twitch of his lips and a bob of his antennae. Yunho follows the other guests up the cliff steps and along one of the crushed shell paths that loops around the southern side of the palace. 

They’re heading for the glasshouses, a series of domed iron pavilions up overlooking the lake. Lights are strung in the gardens outside for when the party really gets going after dark, but for now everyone’s still mingling indoors, amongst the mix of imported and magical blooms.

The overwhelming scents hit him as soon as he gets inside. Entering the glasshouse is like wading into a syrup of competing perfumes, from the guests and the blossoms both. A sickly sweetness dominates it all. The air’s overheated, loud with chatter and frenetic stringed music. If anything, it’s louder than the Lowtown party over the lake.

Yunho passes by a group wreathed in pale colours, with a glamour sending billows of smoke floating around them. The smoke adds a woodsy, sexy smell that does battle with the floral reek. 

He accepts a beaker of nectar from one of the servants, but doesn’t drink from it. They’re still using the same little clay beakers for first nectar, with their gold metallic glaze and honeycomb stamp. 

He doesn’t think he recognizes anyone, though the masks don’t help, and nobody talks to him. Eyes on him, sure, but nobody does more than brush by him as they pass. The occasional crude lean of a body into his or a hand where it shouldn’t be reminds him he’s Lowtown now, he’s fair game.

He wasn’t sure he’d recognize Mingi in a mask and costume, but of course when he finally finds him, he’s completely unmistakable. 

The poet has pulled up a deckchair alongside an ornamental fountain, and is lounging on it watching the party like he’s on a throne, all long limbs and stylish boredom. Somehow he’s managed to filch a handful of snack platters, lining them up at easy reach along the arm of the deckchair. 

Unlike the others at the party in their tropical flower hues, or the silvery pale few with their clouds of attendant smoke, he’s all in black, just like Yunho. His hair is now a cap of flame red, half-mask set with matching red gems that glitter white-gold as they catch the light. 

Even with the party swirling around him, he’s utterly alone; there’s a clear no-man’s-land around his makeshift throne. There’s plenty of attention on him, but it’s sidelong, it’s mocking. He’s an outcast.

Yunho takes a seat next to him, on the edge of the fountain. There’s a fine mist in the air, and the rush of the water drowns out some of the worst of the music. It’s actually kind of nice. Or only just down the street from nice, anyway. 

He takes off his jacket and pops open the top button of his black shirt, trying to cool down. He’s conscious of the poet’s eyes on him, watching him. Yunho reaches over him to help himself to a pastry from one of the platters.

“If you want to keep a clear head for tonight, I wouldn’t eat that. The mushrooms are hallucinogenic.” Mingi grins. “And stay out of the smoke clouds, that’s something the Queen’s brewed up for their special party theme. Her inner circle are the ones who look like someone’s just pissed on their bonfire and put them out.” He holds out his hand for the pastry. “Oh, and don’t let anybody kiss you.”

Yunho drops the forbidden pastry into his hand. “You don’t think it’s a bit early in our fake relationship for jealousy?”

“No, dumbass, half of them have mind-altering shit in their cosmetics. It’s a new thing. But okay, you’re right. There may be people watching. We have to put on a show.” 

Mingi puts the pastry down and takes his hand. Lifting it to his lips with fingers that are unexpectedly cool, he presses a gentle kiss to Yunho’s knuckles. His eyes are brighter than the gems on his mask. He looks like maybe he’s made a start on something mind-altering himself. Up close, tiny sparks lift from his red hair.

“You’ve got to stay pure tonight, Yunho. You’ve got work to do.” Mingi recovers the pastry and folds it into his mouth, licks at a stray crumb at the side of his lips. Yunho’s ears feel hot and his hand is tingling. He’s not going to think about it.

This teasing back and forth, flirting, whatever it is, is a game he might have won once upon a time, but he’s gotten rusty. Too much work, too little practice. It’s too easy to throw him.

“How many of those have you had already?” he asks coolly.

“How do you think I know they’re hallucinogenic?” Mingi pulls a flask from inside his coat. “The secret is, though, I’m only drinking water.”

He tips the contents of Yunho’s beaker into the fountain and refills it with water from the flask. He has to do everything one-handed; his bandage tonight is black to match his suit, with a tiny red-gemmed pin shaped like a butterfly.

Mingi’s hands over the water. “I’m pretty sure they’re here, by the way.”

“Who’s here?” The glasshouse is packed. Nobody misses first nectar.

“Whoever did this to me.” Mingi’s pose says elegant unconcern, but he’s watching the party with glittering eyes. “You’d want to see it, right? You’re paying a lot to make someone suffer. Gotta have ringside seats for that.”

“You’re wearing the ward I gave you?”

“Right here.” Mingi taps his chest.

“What about the ghost, have you seen her here? Heard her since you got back?”

‘You’re no fun at parties.” Mingi leans towards him. His voice is soft, just audible over the fountain. “Heads up, I’m just going to pretend you said something cute.” A woman’s voice from behind Yunho cuts through Mingi’s laugh.

“Nice to see you found someone willing to share your disgrace, Mingi.” 

Yunho turns, registers the cloud of smoke floating around her. He can smell it now, a dry, cinnamon scent like distilled autumn. Her mask is silvery, her eyes dark under a rising cloud of ash grey hair. 

Casually as he can, he leans back against Mingi, out of the worst of the smoke. The poet’s arm comes up around him. Yeah, that’s not going to help his concentration any better than whatever’s in the smoke.

Her glance flickers over him, briefly. “Oh, pretty.”

She’s one of the ones who took the opportunity to brush past him a little too close earlier, when he was looking for Mingi. 

“We haven’t met,” he says. “Well, pretty sure you cupped my ass back there, but we haven’t been properly introduced.”

He feels Mingi’s laugh, rather than hears it.

“Seunghee, nice costume. Very… safe.”

She smirks. “They didn’t tell you the theme this year, did they?”

“It’s a killer. You know how much I love to fit in with everyone.”

“Oh, you’re so edgy. So different.” She shakes her head. “You’re a freak, Mingi, is what it is. You couldn’t fit in if you tried. And soon you won’t have to try anymore.”

Death threat? Or just rote playground bullying? Yunho’s pretty sure it’s the latter. There’s something artificial about her outrage. She’s not genuinely angry, she’s just having malicious fun.

“Some of us have been talking to the Queen. We think you’d do better elsewhere.”

“Can’t write satire if I don’t stay where the food’s richest.”

“Can’t write much of anything, at the moment.” She glances at his bandaged hand. “And even if you did, you’d have to pay people to listen. But maybe that’s what you’re doing with your Lowtown lapdog.”

Yunho rolls his head back against Mingi’s shoulder. “Actually, he’s paying to listen to me. I can be pretty loud.”

Mingi’s arm tightens around him with a noise of delight. 

“Bye, Seunghee. Off you go, now.” The poet’s voice is full of laughter. “I’m sure the rest of the fog bank’s wondering where you are.

She steps back from them, as if their freakishness is contagious. Her face has gone an ugly shade of mottled pink. 

“We’re petitioning for exile. I just thought you should know.”

She swings on her heel and retreats into the crowd in a swirl of irritated smoke.

“I lied, you _are_ fun at parties.” Mingi is so close that his breath tickles Yunho’s ear. “I missed you.”

_I was right there in Lowtown. Last two years. It was in the letter._

Yunho shifts Mingi’s arm away and sits back on the fountain’s edge. He feels cold all along the line of his back, where he’s been leaning. “Was she on your short-list?”

There’s a short pause before the poet answers. “Seunghee? No, no patience, ghosts are too slow. She’d just knife you and fret about the mess later.” He sighs. “Just one glass of nectar, seriously. This would all be so much better.”

“Just drink your water.”

Yunho takes a look through the platters and picks out the things least likely to be drugged; toasted rice-cakes, a sesame sweet, spiced chicken on skewers. Mingi gives him a nod.

There’s one thing he’s been wondering. He doesn’t need to know, but he does want to hear it. In this place, information is armour.

“Can you tell me what you did? Why everyone’s so riled up?”

The poet pulls a cease-pain spell from his coat pocket and lays it flat across his wrist. “What do the stories say?”

 _What makes you think I listen to stories about you?_ But he does. Of course he does.

“If you weed out the obvious lies? You insulted someone important. Someone from Rope-of-Stars?”

“It was at a closed doors council session, but yeah, that’s basically true. As far as it goes.” 

Closed doors, so most people talking about it didn’t hear first-hand. And Mingi will have been sworn not to repeat anything, as will all the other members of the Queen’s council. 

“Long stupid story short, I said something I shouldn’t have about Rope-of-Stars’ ambassador, and they pulled her out. And that screwed up a major trade deal.”

In the constellation of fae courts, Hivesong is a tiny player, a molehill to Rope-of-Stars’ mountain. Losing the ambassador, losing the financial benefits of the larger court’s goodwill… and also the message that would send the other courts that they depend on, about Hivesong’s falling status. 

No wonder the Queen’s unhappy. They’re so wickedly vulnerable right now.

He wonders, though. Mingi’s many things, but he’s no idiot. “You said that’s true, as far as it goes?”

Mingi screws up the used spell and jams it back in his pocket. “It’s done. I fucked up. And look on the bright side, I get to talk to 90% fewer assholes at parties.”

A bright voice chips in from beside them. “Do I want to know which percentile I’m in?”

The woman who has joined them looks and sounds familiar, even in a lacy gold mask. She’s wearing a dress shaped like the voluptuous petals of a white rose, and a circlet of fresh flowers in her hair, creamy white and pale icy purple. 

Decorations shaped like stylised bees are dotted through the circlet, from pale silver-gold through amber to a rich red so dark they’re almost black. They’re dusted with gold, like her mask. 

Minnie worked with Hivesong’s Swarm, he remembers. She was best friends with the Crown Princess. Hung around with him and Mingi, too, sometimes.

Mingi starts to answer her, but she holds up a warning finger. “Shut up! You, I’m not talking to.”

“Queen’s orders, huh?”

“What, I can’t think for myself? Call it loyalty, have you seen Wooyoung? The boy’s in a mess over Rope-of-Stars, and he’s not the only one. So yeah, not talking to you.”

Mingi opens his mouth again and she slaps a hand over it. 

“No! Stop talking to me.”

Yunho almost misses the gentle way she pats Mingi’s cheek afterwards, as her hand drops.

“Jeong Yunho, though.” She wraps her arms around his middle and he’s enveloped in a cloud of sweet tea rose and something spicy underneath. “We’ve missed you so much. I’m sorry it had to be this bad company that brought you back, but if you get sick of him, come find us.”

“Minnie,” says Mingi quietly, and her eyes flick over to him. “Yejun’s here. I saw him earlier.”

“My ex,” she says to Yunho. Her mouth compresses. “More bad company. I swear, I kept it completely secret, what I was wearing tonight, and he shows up in a matching costume. He’s not so good at letting go.” 

He catches something moving in her dark hair; a ruby-red bee trails lazily across her forehead. 

They’re not decorations.

They’re Hive bees.

Minnie notices his frozen gaze taking in her living head-dress and smiles. “What, you thought they’d miss a party in their honour?”

She raises her hand and the bee meanders onto it. It’s almost the size of her thumb, glinting in the light. 

“They’re little gossips. They like to know what’s happening, who’s visiting.”

She holds her palm up to the level of his face and he freezes. The bee waves antennae at him but makes no move to leave Minnie’s hand. Its black eyes are like beads.

This is Hivesong, the house-god, or part of her, anyway. The power behind the throne. Every family house has it’s god, but they’re small powers, minor miracles who watch over their families but can manage little more. It’s when the larger powers make a home in the world that courts like Hivesong rise around them. 

He scrambles to his feet, bowing deeply to the red bee, and ignores Mingi’s snort of laughter.

When he looks up again the bee has flown back to the circlet of flowers. Minnie pats his face softly, much like she did with Mingi.

“Don’t pay any attention to that fool. You did good, Yunho. They like you.” She smiles warmly. “They liked your mother, too.”

He bows again with a smile, this time to Minnie. She was one of the rare good ones, too much of a sweetheart for this place.

“Oh my,” she murmurs. “You’re wasted on this sack of weasels. No offence, sack of weasels.”

“None taken.”

“Shush! Yunho, look after him while you’re here.” She raises her beaker of nectar in a toast. “Look after each other.”

 _While you’re here._ The reminder is like a little splash of cold reality. He really is just passing through. Here for work, then gone. Not that he has any desire to stay longer than he needs to.

He waves to Minnie and the bees as they leave. When he sits down to retrieve his food, Mingi’s watching him with an odd smile.

“What?”

“Oh my, Jeong Yunho!” He can’t tell, but there’s a distinct possibility Mingi is batting his eyelashes behind the mask.

“It’s nice someone appreciates me. Shut up.” For a moment, he’s about to stop the poet’s mouth with a hand like Minnie did, but that mouth.... he thinks that if he touches it, his hand might actually combust. The thought of those lips on his hand again, on his palm no less, makes him focus instead on the rice cakes. _Idiot_.

“He’s a prick. Yejun, Minnie’s ex. Speaking of undeserving weasels.”

“Mingi!” The hoarse yell comes from a knot of party-goers nearby, from a short, dark-haired man in an elegant white suit. He’s wearing a moon mask, silver and untouchably smooth on one half; cratered, rough and dark on the other.

A couple of his friends are hanging onto his arms, trying to stop this encounter happening. He shakes them off, leaves them in a disapproving knot and stalks over.

He’s intent on Mingi, paying no attention to Yunho whatsoever. His voice is harsh and far too loud as conversations around them quieten down so that people can listen.

“Hey, so, I don’t know if you heard, I’m leaving court at the end of the week. We’ve had to sell everything up to clear our debts. Can’t even afford a one-room shit-hole in Lowtown anymore, I’m going down country. I hear they’re trying to get you exiled, maybe you want to join me? Think of all the writing you could get done in the quiet.”

Mingi seems to brace himself. “I’m glad you’ve got somewhere to go. I hope things work out for you and your family, Wooyoung.”

Moon Mask - Wooyoung - is barely listening. This close, the scent of nectar fumes from him is sweet and cloying. He waves his empty beaker at Mingi’s head. “I used to think you were so fucking clever when we were together, you know? I loved that big, sexy brain of yours. But you’re dumb as fuck, when it comes down to it. I’m stupid for trusting you, and you’re just stupid.”

Yunho stirs, wanting to break this up. Mingi’s hand comes to rest lightly on his shoulder. Feels like a plea to let this, whatever it is, run its course. He sits back, reluctantly.

“I mean, how did you live here your whole life, and not realise that sometimes you have to let the shitheads win? The ambassador - I don’t care what she did! You take it, and you smile, and you lie about it if you have to, and the world keeps fucking turning!”

“I’m not going to lie.” Mingi’s voice is quiet. “There are some things I won’t lie about.”

“Yeah, I know, your precious honesty. Well, because of your honesty, I now have nothing. My family has nothing. But hey, as long as Song Mingi is managing to hold on by his fingernails, I suppose that’s just fine. I’m sure your honesty was well worth it.”

“I’d say sorry, but that’s not what you want from me any more, is it?“

"I want you to hurt.” The moon mask catches the light, half shining and half ruined. “You’ll always think you’re worth more than the rest of us. That your honesty’s more important than a dozen lesser lives. I want you to fucking hurt.”

Yunho can’t help himself. He sits forward. “How much do you want it?”

_Enough to set a ghost on him? Enough to kill?_

Wooyoung looks his way, blindly. “What?”

“You want to hurt him.” He eases into second sight, just for a moment. The colours in the room, the avid emotions, are a cacophony. He just wants to see Wooyoung’s aura, even amongst the visual noise. 

Yunho doesn’t know him well enough to pick out the finer details of his emotions, but he’s fairly sure of two things. Firstly, what he’s seeing is as much raw grief as it is anger. It turns inwards on Wooyoung, wraps around him like a strangling vine even as it flares outwards at Mingi. 

Secondly, it’s clear that Wooyoung still cares for Mingi. His pale, spiky lilac aura intertwines with the poet’s in a way that Yunho only ever sees when people are deeply attached. 

He lets the sight bleed away, feeling like he’s trespassed on something not meant for him. Mingi’s hand has dropped away from his shoulder.

“I don’t want to hurt him.” Wooyoung has tilted the moon mask back onto his head. He scrubs at his bare face, looking both drunk and beyond tired. “I just, I want him to feel bad. To care about what he’s done.” 

He seems to lose interest in both of them, all at once. His voice is so small now, it’s hard to believe he’s the same person. “You know what, I’m over this. Everyone said, don’t bother talking to him. It won’t help. He’s got nothing to say to you.”

He turns and stumbles back to his friends, who shepherd him away into the crowd. There’s a hush, and then the whispers, the excited conversations start up again around them. Mingi sits as if frozen.

Yunho turns on him, feeling irrationally angry. “Were you ever planning on defending yourself?”

“How’s that going to help? Blaming me is the only thing keeping him going at this point. Not gonna take that away from him too.”

“He doesn’t know what happened, though, right? Not the full story.” Neither do I. But I know _you_.

“Leave it, Yunho. I told you, I fucked up. Just leave it.”

“No, there’s more to this. You’re just not that careless. You don’t screw over the people you care about.”

“You sure?” Mingi looks at him, finally. “Is that how you felt when that letter came back?”

It’s like a punch to the gut. 

Yunho realises there was a tiny, very _very_ stupid part of him that had always believed Mingi didn’t see the letter he sent him, when the Old King died. That court politics kept it from him, somehow.

For a split second, he wants to walk out on him. Just keep walking and get the first boat back to Lowtown.

This _place_.

Because Mingi _is_ Hivesong. Beautiful and mind-altering and fucking broken beyond repair. Too far gone to be a part of, anymore.

But he’s here to do a job.

“It’s not him. Wooyoung.” He can feel the bite in his words, but he can’t quite stop himself. “He’s not the one who sent the ghost. You know how I know? His aura is still knitted all through yours like it doesn’t know how to let go. He still cares about you.”

Enough to be disappointed in you. 

“I know.” Mingi holds his eyes for a moment, then looks away. 

Yunho’s still staring at him when one of the beetle-masked servants appears next to them, tray in hand. There’s a single beaker on it, and a piece of card stamped with the royal honeycomb crest. Smoke writhes around the top of the beaker.

“Compliments of the Queen.”

Mingi reaches for it reluctantly, but the tray swivels.

“Your pardon, Song Mingi. It’s for your companion.” 

Yunho takes the beaker and its accompanying note, bows to the servant as he leaves. The liquid in the glass is honey yellow, thick as syrup, with a blue flame licking along the top. It smells like sweetness with something sharp underneath. The smoke coils around his fingers like sinuous jewelry.

He reads the note aloud.

_“We thought you might appreciate an alternative to the company you find yourself in. Please, enjoy.”_

It’s the royal nectar. The very special, only for a select few, highly magically intoxicating royal nectar.

“You can’t drink that.” Mingi sits forwards on the deckchair, voice low and urgent. “But also, you can’t not drink that. She’s doing this to make a point. She’ll be watching.”

“What happens if I don’t drink it?”

“A direct insult to the Queen? You’ll attract attention. Best case? They throw you out. Worst case starts with the maggies, and goes downhill from there.”

“What’s the theme this year?”

“No idea,” says Mingi. “Probably nothing friendly. The Queen’s not as bad as her father was, but she’s not in the best mood these days.”

Because it’s not enough that this blend is alcoholic enough to drop him to his knees. No, Hivesong’s Swarm lace this drink with a special kick; he’s going to be reliving something from his past, in full living colour. He’ll look like he’s asleep - and he’ll be completely useless for the duration.

 _Keep a clear head._ He’s utterly screwed.

The Queen herself chooses the theme for each year’s memory; another cute secret that only the chosen few know.

The Old King specialized in memories of pain; physical, emotional, psychological, he was an artist with them all.

Soyeon in a bad mood… could be capable of a lot. 

The knots of smoke-coloured partygoers seem suddenly ominous, swirling in his peripheral vision.

“If I’m… compromised, tonight, if I can’t get my shit together like I need to, it’s dangerous. For both of us.” 

“Yeah, I know. How good’s your sleight of hand?” 

Mingi pulls the flask from his jacket and fills his beaker. “Can you switch the beakers? You get the water, and I take the memory, whatever it is?” 

“Can’t we just switch it out altogether? Tip it in the fountain?”

“No, she’d know if nobody drinks it. The Swarm collects up the memories at the end of the night. The Old King used to spend hours picking out people’s worst nightmares for his collection. He lived for that shit. Not a pretty sight.” He taps the side of his head. “Council secrets you never wanted to know. Got ‘em all right here.”

He comes to sit beside Yunho on the edge of the fountain, and leans in close. Threading his arm through Yunho’s, he pulls both beakers up to their mouths at the same time. Yunho swivels the beakers so they’re each poised to drink from the other’s cup, angling his body as best he can to hide them from any onlookers.

“Wait.” Yunho has only drunk royal nectar once, his last year here, the year they escaped. The memory of pain is still so strong, even four years on. Mingi wasn’t there that night, but he was there to pick up the pieces afterwards. He remembers that much.

“Hey, it’s alright. We need you functional.” The poet smiles. “You heard Minnie. Take care of me, okay?”

Mingi swallows the nectar, and Yunho downs the beaker of water.

They pull back, and there’s a telltale puff of smoke hanging around the poet’s mouth. He wraps both arms around Mingi’s neck swiftly and leans in close again. 

“Your mouth’s smoking.”

Mingi’s eyebrows quirk upwards and Yunho can just about hear the smartass response forming.

“There’s smoke,” he growls. “From the drink.”

“Oh. Okay, that’s not good.” Mingi’s breath smells sweet, with that sharp alcoholic tang underlying it.

“Here.” Yunho turns his head slightly and pushes Mingi’s head down to nestle against him, hiding him away from the crowd.

The cold gems on the poet’s mask scratch his jaw just before he feels the soft tension of warm lips against his collarbone. Mingi sighs softly, tickling him, and Yunho closes his eyes at the sensation.

The thought of that lush mouth on his skin goes immediately, shamefully, straight to his groin. He can feel all his necessary concentration evaporating in a hot mess of desire and frustration. 

_Stay pure, you’ve got work to do._ Sure, Yunho. Sure thing.

He’s proud of the way his voice sounds steady. “I hope whatever’s in that doesn’t travel through the skin.” 

Mingi’s voice is muffled. “If it does, this was kinda counterproductive.”

“How long have we got until it hits you?” 

“I think it’s pretty instant.” He laughs, breath snuffling into Yunho’s neck. “Oh, you mean the drink.”

“Okay, here’s what we’re doing. You know I’m not used to this stuff, so you’re going to take me somewhere quiet, fast. Somewhere private. We’re okay to leave, right?” 

There are maggies around the doorways. They’re going to have to get past them to leave.

Mingi pulls away, blinking slowly as if to clear his head. The smoke is gone, at least, but he’s swaying ever so slightly under Yunho’s hands.

Yunho keeps a grip on his shoulders. “Can you stand? Walk okay?”

“Pretty sure. We should have a little time before it kicks in. It starts off slow, remember?” He’s still blinking like he can’t quite focus.

“We’re going outside, now. Don’t talk to anyone.” 

He helps Mingi out through the crowd, trying to make it look as if they’re leaning on each other. Mingi’s arm is around his waist and he steers him subtly round knots of people, keeping his head down as much as he can. 

But he can feel their eyes on him, on Mingi. Gossip, soft laughter, curiosity and judgement swirl around them like smoke. 

_Soyeon, if you’re watching, please just let us go. You’ve had your fun._

He feels the cool air from the gardens somewhere off to their left, beyond a quartet with screaming fiddles, and heads them into the crowd of dancers, towards the open door. 

Passing the maggie on guard makes his stomach clench. He’s just waiting for her to stop them, or for Mingi to fall over or throw up on her. Gods know, it wouldn’t be the first time the two of them have started something like that.

But luck is on his side, and they’re through and into the gardens. It’s early evening, and the cool fresh air hits him like a blessing. He swings them both around to head for the palace. One of Mingi’s few council perks is a small suite of rooms in the south wing. Should give them the privacy they need until he can get the place warded.

“No, wait.” Mingi stops them both, still swaying slightly. “I’m not there anymore. Red Court. That way.”

He points across the gardens, in the opposite direction. Of course, where else would they put him now that he’s Hivesong’s resident outcast. The Red Court is one of the oldest, most run-down guest wings on the palace grounds. It’s exile in all but name.

They make their way across the softly-lit lawns. A few other partygoers have wandered out to sit under the trees, where lanterns glow gold against the backdrop of an indigo sky. They get a little attention, but most people are too busy with each other to look their way.

“Yunho, wait, hold on. We can’t go to the Red Court.” Mingi pulls him to a halt, blinking at him. “There’s a ghost there.”

“That’s okay. That’s what we want, remember?” Yunho coaxes him back into motion and they stumble on down the path under the trees.

“Why do we want that, again? Sorry, I’m just. I’m having trouble right now. Everything’s spinning.”

‘I need to meet your ghost, that’s why I’m here. I can’t stop her if I don’t find out how she works.” 

“You’re here to see the ghost?” He’s actually pouting. “I thought you came to see me, you never come to see me anymore.”

“I’m here to keep you safe.” I hope. Not doing a stellar job so far. “Did you remember what I asked you to get?”

“What you asked me to get,” he repeats slowly. “Oh, yeah! Well, sort of. I’m sorry.” 

Mingi pulls a slim bone blade from an inside pocket of his coat. It’s actually an ivory letter opener, blunt and weathered a pale yellow. “Is that okay, will it work? I couldn’t find a proper knife, but you said the important thing was that it was bone?”

“Perfect,” he says. His own knife is a marvel of solid design and utility, with years of careful work going into each of its runes. It’s currently sitting in a safe in the workshop, because the maggies would snap his fingers like twigs if he tried to bring a weapon into Hivesong.

In comparison, the letter opener feels flimsy and unfamiliar, like it’ll split in two if a ghost looks at it funny. “Yeah, this will be fine. You did good.”

Swaying more noticeably, Mingi leads him down a side path that takes them through a pear orchard, with drifts of blossoms underfoot and trodden into the path. They don’t see any other people out this way, and the lanterns start to grow further and further apart. 

He slides into second sight, immediately aware of Mingi’s fiery aura beside him, warm and ghost-frayed at the edges. There’s a luminous, golden-dark corona around his head that’ll be the effect of the royal nectar. He looks like he’s still mostly fighting it off, for now.

They pass through a rose garden that almost rivals the glasshouses for heavy scent, and pick their way around the edges of an overgrown hedge maze of box trees. There’s no flower scent there, just the smell of earth and stone, getting heavier the darker it gets.

Instinct prickles him as they start to cross under an arbor of thick gnarled vines, a darker space in the evening gloom. There’s one more lantern on the path before the arbor, then no more lanterns this way. He stops, pulling Mingi to a halt.

“We need to stop, I need to get ready.” 

He can feel them running out of time. The teachers always said, listen to your instinct. It’s your first line of defence. It’s probably telling you something you need to know. 

“I think she’s coming.” 

There are few options to set their backs to. The pillar of the arbor frame, maybe? The peeling wood will take a light ward, repeat it on all sides. Good enough. Perhaps. “Here, we need to set up here. We’re not going to get to the Red Court.” 

As soon as Yunho stops walking, Mingi’s legs fold and he sinks bonelessly onto the path. He’s pulled his mask off along the way and he looks younger, more vulnerable without it. His eyes are still open but heavy-lidded, halfway to lost with whatever the nectar has waiting for him. He’s not focussing so well any more. The corona flames around his head, poisonous amber with darkness at its heart.

Yunho sits beside him, pulling him close and tucking them up together with their backs to the wooden pillar. He unthreads the decorative steel pin from his shirt cuff. It’s not quite lethal enough to trigger the maggies, but it’ll do well for what he needs.

“This is it, huh?” Mingi’s voice is soft. “Last stand?”

“Stop being a drama queen. You’ve got that ward I gave you, right?”

“Cross my heart.” He taps his chest. “Hey, if we get through this, will you show me your tattoo?”

“Be quiet a moment.” Yunho punches the pin neatly into the tip of his own index finger. Blood wells up dark against his skin in the gloom, and he uses the end of the pin to start tracing runes onto the letter opener. 

“You won’t let her take me over again, will you? She’s got a thing for this body. Won’t leave it alone.”

“That’s what the ward’s for. Keeping her out.”

He feels Mingi’s warm breath on the side of his face, the lean of Mingi’s forehead against him. Keeps writing his wards as carefully and precisely as he can in the growing dark.

“She’s trying to make me scream. Don’t let her make me scream.”

“She’s not going to get in. I've got you.”

Experimentally, he pushes a little energy through the runes on the letter opener. For a moment, there’s nothing, and cold panic jolts through him. It’s okay, it’s just stubborn, unfamiliar. Well, he can be stubborn, too. 

He tries again, and they flare, crackly but sluggishly responsive. Fuck. Okay. It’s faint, but it has to be enough.

He pulls gently away from Mingi, who immediately starts to slide sideways, completely gone now. Yunho props him up against the pillar as best he can. He’s deep in the grip of his nectar-fueled memory, head slumped forwards, and he doesn’t respond. Yunho lays a hand on Mingi’s shirt and senses the ward against his chest, right where it should be. He can feel his own energy pulsing softly from the runes. Good. 

He sends his senses out through the garden. It’s getting stronger, the overwhelming feeling that something’s coming, racing towards them. His fear swells and he stops to breathe himself calm. Takes him a moment to realise that it’s not his fear; it’s hers, something she carries with her. She’s close.

The scent of damp earth and stone swims around him. His breath is a pale cloud in the rapidly cooling night air. 

He needs to ward the pillar fast. He pricks a second finger and starts to write the light ward runes on one face of the pillar, over Mingi’s head. 

He can’t see what he’s doing too well, but he knows this craft like he knows his own aura. When he pushes energy through it, a faint aura-light the shifting blue-tinged green of seawater falls from the four sides of the pillar. It doesn’t do much to pierce the darkness dropping around them, but he knows that if he needs to, he can ramp up the energy and make it brighter. It’s a last defence; if all else fails, it should repel her. For a while, at least.

He checks the blade again and it's rough but serviceable. It’ll work. Training had them hunting under less than optimal conditions. He should be ready. He needs to be ready.

He hears her before he sees her.

There’s a rasp beside them, the sound of someone taking a choking breath. When he turns his head she’s there, just beyond Mingi. She’s a stuttering darkness, pulling the night around her. Her long, dark hair is a tattered cloak, pale face just a smear. 

He pulls Mingi closer to him at the same time as he starts trying to match the pattern of his aura. Not the colours, but the way the energy flows, the extravagant brightness and intensity. He can’t keep it up for long, but he doesn’t need to.

Just needs to keep it going long enough to fool her, get her thinking of them as one person, not two. She can’t see the colours, but she can read the energy patterns, they’re what she hunts by. He wants her close. Not to catch her, not tonight. To learn her well enough to build a trap.

A stutter and she’s closer, bringing the cold with her. She’s making a wet, rasping noise, a long rough rattling exhalation. Her mouth is an open pit in the blur of her face. 

He can feel her fear now, running through his blood, alien enough that he knows it’s not his. Riding on the fear, a fury that burns so hot it feels like ice water in his veins. Shadows come with her, pressing on the light from the pillar runes, threading through it like black mildew racing for its heart. 

He feels rather than sees her reaching for Mingi, and for a moment her fingers rest on the poet’s injured hand. It’s almost a caress. The tips of her fingers are torn and bloody. 

The bone knife feels flimsy in his grasp. If he needs to, he can use it to weaken her and drive her away, but right now he needs to understand who she is, who she was. 

She strikes fast, suddenly occupying the space Mingi is in. The ward on his chest flares and she’s back across the garden in a seething flurry of shadow. 

Even at a distance, her reaction pounds at him, stretched thin as he is by working with his aura. Her towering anger brings a darkness so complete that he loses sight of the lantern and the light wards for long moments. Then she’s back. Her rasping whisper-scream beats at them and Yunho’s throat burns raw. He tastes blood.

Her fingers come out to touch him, stuttering across his chest. It’s so cold, his breath feels like knives in his throat. Her cut-up fingertips recoil from the tattoo over his heart. 

Then she’s hanging over Mingi. Her fingers stroke the air above his chest, right over the frayed places in his aura where she’s attacked him before, where she’s possessed him. The ward’s still there blocking her, he can feel it. 

Mingi’s aura dims and frays as he watches. The ward’s glow is dimming and he can feel the energy dropping away.

It’s impossible.

Ghosts can’t attack wards. It should be strong enough to hold her out.

But it’s falling apart from whatever she’s doing. Stroking the ward with her torn fingers. He plunges his hand through hers to throw his energy into the ward, recharge it with his own blood, and as their fingers meet he feels it. 

Runeworking. Someone else’s runework, channeled through her hand. Through her cut fingers. 

She’s going to take down the ward.

_Don’t let her make me scream._

He drops what he’s doing with the aura and slashes at her with the letter opener, pushing a burst of energy through it. Instead of interrupting her, he feels the jarring impact as she latches onto the blade. It’s like she’s caught it and is holding on. Waves of her pain and fear ripple through him, like the blade’s hurting her, but she’s holding fast to it. 

Drop it or hold on? It’s his best weapon. He’s got no idea how she’s doing this, but it must be connected to the runeworking he felt. Instinct’s yelling at him to drop it, but it’s his best weapon.

Mingi’s aura is curling up over his chest like ash, fading, burning away. The ward’s almost gone. Yunho curls his hand tighter around the thin blade and keeps his energy steady through it. 

With no warning, there’s a wrenching sensation and the energy rushes through him, out through the blade and into the ghost. Feels like she’s pulling it out of him through the runes on the blade, like a rope being yanked through his hands, even as he tries to hold on. His aura’s suddenly spooling away out of him and he’s fighting to get enough air. He can’t seem to let go of the blade anymore; darkness swarms around him. 

The letter opener splinters in his hand and the pieces fall away. He can move again.

He drops and scrambles over to Mingi. The ghost is a mess of pain and rage and triumph, scrawled in the air over Mingi’s ward as she picks away the last of his protection. 

He needs to scare her off. There’s nothing left to do it, except the light ward on the pillar. If he can just crank it up, surely the knife’s weakened her, just a little. He can buy them some time if he can just bring the light. His aura’s chewed up, though; he needs something else. He needs blood. 

The steel pin is in a pocket but his fingers are numb and stiff when he tries to find it. The splinters of the knife are here somewhere. His hand closes over dirt, gravel, a jagged scrap of bone still attached to the hilt of the letter opener. He tugs at the sleeve of his shirt, makes a fist and slashes at his forearm with the shard of bone. Dropping the splinter, Yunho swipes a hand across the gash in his arm and reaches back to smear blood across the wood of the pillar. 

He pushes everything he has left into the ward and a flare of intense sea-green washes over everything, lighting up the garden like the glitter of sun on water. He feels rather than sees the ghost unravel under the light before a soft darkness claims him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can reach me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/nelliedae) to chat about Ateez or writing whenever :) Hope you're all loving the heck out of this cb as much as I am!!! seriously Good Lil Boy has set up camp in my heart and all the new choreo is making me swoon <3


	2. Chapter 2

He wakes up wrapped in blankets, on a makeshift bed. His arm is throbbing. When he opens his eyes, light blinds him. Overcast daylight is streaming through the windows, with lamps all around the mattress on the floor making warmer pools of light. 

Mingi is sitting nearby with his back to the wall, good hand wrapped around a mug of something steaming, watching him wake up.

The large room is almost bare, with stained white plaster walls and wide-silled windows looking out at grey sky. The only personal touches are a few piles of books stacked by the mattress, and an enormous wooden hand-painted wardrobe in one corner. 

There are more unlit lamps on the table and window sills, as well as an iron stand of candles by the door. 

“Where are we?” His voice sounds rusty. It hurts to talk.

“This is the Red Court. We’re up a few floors. I’ve been sleeping up here, away from everyone, while this is going on.” 

Mingi’s face is bare of his usual court makeup, and he’s swapped his black suit for a long, loose brown tunic and dark leggings. The glamour has worn off his hair, which is back to black. His face looks softer, and very tired. “How are you feeling?”

_Like something with claws has been trying to scratch its way out of my throat._

_Like I came pretty close to getting us both killed last night._

Yunho sits up. His arm has been bandaged awkwardly, a cloth wrap pinned together by a clip with an enamel butterfly on it. The shift into aura-sight is harder than usual and everything feels numb and distant. His own aura is a mess, weaker than usual. Mingi’s aura has obvious new ghost-sign over his heart.

“We got lucky, I think.” 

Mingi’s mouth compresses. “That was lucky?”

“We’re still here.” He flexes the fingers on his injured arm. Still working, just sore. “Did she come back?”

“She wasn’t there when I came to. Haven’t seen her since I got us back up here.” He looks like he’s been awake all night. “I lit the lamps. The first thing she does when I’m asleep is get me to put them all out.”

“She probably died somewhere dark. Ghosts can be pretty obsessive about their deaths. It’s like they’re stuck there, they keep going back to what they know.” 

He’s rambling, fighting back that looming feeling of near failure that hurts worse than the slash on his arm. “She brings that darkness with her.”

Darkness and cold. That overpowering smell of damp earth and stone. It’s not her grave, it’s her memories of how she died. Underground? Not buried alive, though. That’s unmistakeable, once you’ve lived through someone’s memories of it. Yunho shivers, wraps the blankets closer.

Mingi stirs. “I’ll get you something warm to drink.” 

He pads over to the table. 

“I’m sorry,” Yunho says. 

Mingi is busy firing up a pot-spell under the mug, twisting the fold of paper that ignites the spell.

“For what?”

 _I screwed up._ The words sit heavy in his mouth along with the overwhelming sting of how close he came to failure. If she’d come back, she could have done anything she wanted to Mingi, and he wouldn’t have been awake to stop her. 

“We got out of it, but I got things wrong.” He swallows, keeps going despite the burn in his throat. “She surprised me a couple of times. I made some wrong guesses. A lot of what happened last night, I hadn’t seen it before. Like I said, we got lucky.” 

And no hunter worth the name relies on luck. It always turns. Like that letter opener, breaking just when he needed it.

“The good news is, I learned a lot.” His smile is tight. “She just about chewed me up and spat me out, but she had to get close enough to do it. I’ve got enough to catch her now.” 

He has the story of her death to build the trap, and he knows how to get her attention. He can burn bright enough with that borrowed aura to call her to him tonight. “I’m just sorry it didn’t go how I would’ve wanted.”

“You don’t owe me any apologies.” Mingi hands him the mug of hot tea and retreats back to sit against the wall. “If anything, I should be the one saying sorry. I was less than useless after the nectar kicked in.”

Yunho can smell lemon in his tea, and the sweetness of the honey Mingi has stirred in. The warmth of the drink makes his sore throat sting, but it helps even so.

“They didn’t exactly give us a choice about the nectar.” It would have been nightmarishly worse if he’d had to drink it himself. Incapacitated by whatever past scene the spell fished up, and completely helpless when the ghost came for Mingi. “What was Soyeon’s theme, anyway?”

Something unreadable flickers across the poet’s face. 

“Does it matter? This place is poisonous. It’s not a beehive, it’s a fucking wasps’ nest. And I left you all alone to deal with the ghost shit.”

“I’m a hunter, it’s my job. I never expected you to fight it alongside me.”

“Yeah, but if I hadn’t been a drooling mess we could have got back here first. You wouldn’t have had to go up against her alone out there in the dark.”

“It happened, and we survived. I know a lot more now. I’ll do better next time.”

“Yeah, well, there’s not going to be a next time.” Mingi’s face is shuttered, and he’s staring out the window at the overcast sky. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You were right before. I shouldn’t have picked you. You’re too new. You don’t have enough experience for this.”

For a moment the guilt nails him, the fear of screwing up so badly that someone gets hurt. But he found a way to save them. They got out alive. He’s got this, he knows he can do it. He might even have a better chance than anyone. 

“Actually, I said you could trust me to do it, and you agreed. Has that changed?”

“I just think it’s best if I find someone else.”

“Mingi, I can do this.”

“You’re not listening. I’m going to find someone else. You’re dismissed. Or however it works.”

That arrogant court face is back full force, even without the fancy clothes and make-up to carry it off. He looks completely unreachable. Something about that tips Yunho off.

He remembers that face. 

Seventeen year old Song Mingi, all gangly arms and legs and bratty attitude, covering up his worries with apparently nerveless overconfidence. It’s fear that does this to him. This is his mask, his strongest armour. And it’s going to get him killed, because he’s going to push away the person best placed to help him. Because she’s got weird tricks, and she’s accelerating, and he doesn’t have time to start this again with someone else, no matter how good they are.

“Okay, I’ll go,” he says, hoping he’s right. “If you can look at me and tell me honestly you don’t trust me to do this.”

Mingi looks over at him, at last. Considering his words. Giving away nothing.

“Your famous honesty, right? You’ve got some things you won’t lie about? You tell me honestly you don’t have faith in me and I’ll find you another hunter.”

He wills Mingi to believe in him with every fibre in his body.

“I do have faith in you.” He forces the words out, an intensity in his eyes that Yunho can’t read. “But you’re still not doing this.”

“Why are you being such a martyr about this? Why don’t you want me to help you?”

“Because I woke up and found you lying there covered in blood, Yunho, okay? It was just like that time, with the maggies. What am I supposed to do with that?”

Yunho takes a moment, breathes in the warm, comforting lemon scent of his tea, places the mug down beside the bed. He needs to get this right. “You saved my family. I let you walk back into Hivesong and take whatever happened next so we could be safe.”

“You didn’t let me do anything. I chose it.”

“Just like I’m choosing this. I’m finishing this.”

“What, because you owe me? Out of _gratitude_?”

“No, you complete dumbass. Same reasons you helped me. Because I’m here, and I can. And because it matters to me that you’re safe. So - just deal with it. You’re not getting rid of me.”

_Because despite everything, despite that letter you never even bothered to read, I care about you too much for my own comfort. So, who’s the real dumbass?_

And maybe, just maybe he sees something of that last part on Yunho’s face.

Mingi lets out a long, frustrated moan, slumping over his knees. “Alright, gods, okay. Yes. Stay. But if anything happens to you….” He looks sideways at Yunho, and his lips twitch upwards in a faint smile. “I’ve got a busted hand, and I won’t be able to turn it into a heroic poem any time soon.”

“It can wait.” He grins. “There’s one more thing. You look like seven kinds of shit, but I need you to come with me back to Lowtown. You’re the only way I can get my knife into Hivesong, and I’ll need it tonight. You can sleep where we’re going, if that helps.”

“What, you were expecting me to sleep here alone? Sad times, when even my fake hook-up wants to ditch me. Where are we going?”

“A friend of mine is going to paint us a ghost trap.”

_____________

The closed sign is hanging on the door at Aurora, but it’s unlocked and Yeosang is working in the shop when they come in. Yunho waits while he finishes inking a rune on a strip of parchment with his impeccable penmanship. It’s a thing of beauty, watching Yeosang write. He was in the same year as Yunho, but specializing in wards, rather than hunting. He has a precision that’s almost scary. 

He’s wearing a glamour that turns his hair a cool gold, wings of hair falling around his face as he works. When he finally looks up, Yunho feels Mingi’s startled reaction beside him. He forgets what it’s like for people who’ve never seen Yeosang before. He’s more impressed by the runesmith’s crafting, but even Yunho has to admit he’s pretty. 

There’s something about the calmness of his dark eyes, the air of delicacy that could so easily be mistaken for fragility. He’s wearing strands of necklace the same pale gold as his hair, and a fine chain falling from the tip of one ear to hook back to a warded ring through his earlobe. 

“Hongjoong’s waiting out back.”

A silvery gloss flits across his eyes, an idle scan of their auras. The perfect forehead creases in a pained frown. 

“I’m not even going to ask. But you both need to eat something. And you,” he addresses Mingi, “you need to get some sleep before you fall over.”

“Busy night,” says Mingi. He’s leaning against the wall like it’s just his relaxed attitude, but Yunho suspects he’s actually propping himself up. His eyes look scratchy and tired.

“What happens next?” he asks, covering a yawn with his bandaged hand.

Yunho has to fight the urge not to yawn in response. “Hongjoong’s going to make the trap, you don’t need to stay awake for that.”

“There’s a mattress you can roll out in the storeroom.” Yeosang points down the hall to where a curtain screens off their supply room. “It’s Hongjoong’s, for when he’s working late. Won’t fit you too well, but the room’s well warded.”

Mingi nudges Yunho. “What about you? Can’t you come sleep too, if he’s the one painting this thing?”

Yunho exchanges glances with Yeosang. “He needs me for the trap.”

Yeosang’s voice contains the mildest air of accusation. “You didn’t tell him?”

Mingi’s more awake now. “Tell me what?”

Is there a good way to do this? There’s no good way.

“With a regular haunting, the trap is a box carved with runes. You find the remains, you use them to set and close the trap. With a bound ghost, the nyx has the remains, so you don’t have them to work with.”

“So - what does that mean?”

“With a bound ghost, the hunter has to become the trap. It’s the only way to do it.” Mingi’s staring at him with growing disbelief. “I’m the ghost trap.”

_It’s not dangerous. I’ve done this before. It’ll be fine._

All things he can’t say, and the silence just goes on.

“I’m going to go get some sleep.” Mingi’s voice is flat. He turns and pads off down the corridor. 

Yeosang looks at him, a world of judgement in one raised eyebrow.

“I didn’t want him to worry.”

“Oh, yes, this worked far better.”

“If you’re done judging me, I need to show you something.” He pulls Mingi’s damaged ward from his pocket, suppressing a tiny pang of reluctance to show the Yeosang the evidence of his failed craft. “Ever seen something like this before?”

Seeing the ward in daylight this morning had been bad enough. The ghost’s attack had left black streaks scrawled across the runes, like a mildew that had managed to destroy almost all of the ward’s meaning. Under the bright light of the lamp, the damage looks toxic. If anything, the streaks look even darker. 

Yeosang chews on his lip as he studies it. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say… not good. How did it happen?”

“She tried to possess him, and it blocked her fine, at first. Then she started touching the ward. It was like whatever she was doing was breaking the runes somehow. Eating away at the ward.”

“Touching it how?”

“She was running her fingers over it. They looked bloody, like she’d scratched them.” He touches the tips of his own fingers, remembering. “No, more like they’d been cut. There were cuts on them. Slashes. And I could feel runework.”

“Ghosts can’t work runes. They’ve got nothing to power it.” 

No blood flow. No life energy. “It felt like she was being used to channel someone else’s work.” 

“The nyx?” Yunho nods. “Huh, that’s a new one. Sounds like you’re having all the fun with this job.” He hands Yunho the ward. “I’ll make up a new ghost ward for him while you’re in there. I’ll see what I can do to set up some protection from that, but without knowing how it works…” He shrugs. “Show that one to Hongjoong. He might be able to take some useful guesses.”

The reason for that goes carefully unspoken. Hongjoong is notoriously touchy about his past, but they both know where he’s come from, and why he doesn’t talk about his childhood.

Hongjoong is busy with a design when he goes into the workroom. He raises a hand in greeting, as his pen continues its fluid path on the paper. He was a student in the year ahead of Yeosang and Yunho, a prodigy with runecrafting who became something of an informal mentor to both of them. 

His workroom is larger than Yunho’s, and it has windows that let in light from the street outside, filtered through the trees. Hongjoong looks at home here, dressed in a faded green shirt that has seen better days and trousers that are more holes than cloth, his painting clothes. His choppy hair is the warm sherry colour of the dappled sunlight.

Yunho pulls up a stool and watches the sun fall through the leaves as he waits for the work to finish. The metallic scent of inks and paint is familiar and friendly. Slowly, gradually, his thoughts cease their whirling and a peaceful silence takes their place. 

He’s almost asleep at the desk when Yeosang comes in and drops a plate of hot spiced egg roll stuffed with shallots in front of him, along with a glass of apple tea.

“Can you take some to Mingi?”

“Don’t worry, I got your friend one too. He’s folded himself onto the mattress as best he can and he’s trying to get some sleep. He’s got a new ward and as many lamps as we could fit into the storeroom.”

He’s finished the food - as well as the cold pork belly bun he found in his pocket - by the time Hongjoong gets done. The runesmith drops the pen back in its holder and stretches hard, making a soft noise of complaint.

He stashes the finished piece of work in a drying rack and rubs the back of Yunho’s neck in greeting as he ducks past him.

“Looks like you had an interesting night.” His eyes gleam with silver aura-sight as he tucks himself back onto his stool, curled like a cat. “While it’s fresh, tell me what you’ve got on this ghost.”

He pulls out a clean sheet of paper and dips his pen into the ink. Scrawls the core protection rune just off centre as a starting point.

Yunho takes one last mouthful of the cooling apple tea. Brings himself back to last night. The shadows in the garden, pressing in on him. The smell of earth and stone. The pale shape of her, scratched onto the darkness, all fear and fury.

“She’s probably somewhere around our age. I’d guess late teens, early twenties. Long, dark hair. Either someone’s killed her, or she blames someone for an accident. She’s angry.”

Hongjoong has started to draw again. Slowly at first, a filigree of lines arcing out from the core rune. “The people who bind these ghosts tend to play on that sense of blame. It works best for them if they can fool her into thinking that the person she’s tied to is her killer. Okay, what else?”

“I don’t think her killer was there when she died. She was alone, I can feel it. That’s part of it. She was all on her own. Somewhere dark. Freezing cold. Underground. Feels like...” He closes his eyes, trying to reconstruct how it felt. Hands stretched out, touching… “earth? And stone. She was shut in, couldn’t get out. She could move a little, but she couldn’t go far. She’s hungry, thirsty, cold. Trapped.”

“Easy, Yunho.” 

At Hongjoong’s soft voice he opens his eyes. The bright workroom is jarring for a moment. The early afternoon sunlight slants across the tables, falling dusty through the coloured bottles on the windowsill. He sees her dark, ragged shape when he blinks, sliding through the shadows in the corners. Hears the rough crackle of her breathing in the scratch of Hongjoong’s pen.

_She’s trying to make me scream._

The pain in his throat, after she attacked.

“She wrecked her throat, somehow. I think she might have kept calling out for help. Until she lost her voice.”

“You’re good. I’ve got enough.” The runes continue to grow under Hongjoong’s pen, sinuous and beautiful. Weaving the story of her death into something sure and as complex as a song, all set around the rune Yunho already carries on his chest.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. He drinks the last of the cold tea while Hongjoong draws, chases up the last scraps of the egg roll. He’s still hungry, but maybe it’s just the echo of her hunger, the dead girl. 

It’s like baiting a wild animal, setting a bound ghost on someone. Beating the dead with the worst of their own death until they’re nothing but rage and grief and hatred. It’s pure evil. He wonders again about the runesmith’s childhood. 

Hongjoong finishes the drawing and unfolds himself from the stool to take a look from further away. He cocks his head one way, then another. 

There are root words in there, woven together - darkness. Silence. Solitude. Stone. The shapes of the runes stream across the top of the drawing, like threads of mildew, like unkempt hair. It’s wild and sad and oddly beautiful at the same time. The strength in it is clear and undeniable. It’s like a trap made out of dark, supple reeds, built to hold the ghost. 

Hongjoong gathers his pot of paint and brushes, sets out a stool in the middle of the floor. He rolls his shoulders, working out the kinks from sitting hunched over. 

Yunho pulls his shirt off and takes a seat on the stool. He’s never been painted with a trap, but Hongjoong painted him once for spring festival, and he knows it’s going to tickle like a bitch. 

The runesmith dips a brush in the dark spirit ink. It goes on a deep indigo-brown so dark it’s almost black, but it dries with a shimmer that looks like mica in black sand. It’ll flake off in a couple of days - more itching. 

Hongjoong’s voice is abstracted, when he talks. “You know, when Jongho told me about the job, I was surprised.” 

Yunho realises he’s tensing up, waiting for the comment about it being too much for him, a rookie and a bound ghost. It’s nothing that hasn’t crossed his own mind, but it stings more coming from Hongjoong. “You think I’ve taken on too much?” 

“Considering what they put you through, it just surprised me you’d deal with them again. Lift your arm.”

He complies, confused. Hongjoong begins painting a new rune along the side of his ribs, swirling up to his heart rune. 

“I’ve never worked with a bound ghost before. This is my first time.”

Hongjoong waves it away with a smile. “Not the bound ghost, Yunho. If you think you can handle it, you’re probably right. I trust your judgement. But going back to Hivesong? After everything they did to your family, what are you thinking?”

Ah, that makes more sense. He feels his jaw relax. “I’m not helping the court. I’m helping Mingi.”

Hongjoong’s eyebrows hitch upwards. “There’s a difference?”

“There’s a difference,” he agrees. Not much of one, but he’s starting to see it, the longer he spends with him. It’s like chipping away the layers of ugly old paint to find the original solid substance underneath. 

“You’ve got history with him, but that was so long ago. I didn’t think you saw any of your old court friends, after you left?”

“We hadn’t talked. Not for years.”

Hongjoong is the master of an almost expressionless look of judgement. Must be where Yeosang gets it from. “So he’s come back now, when you’re finally on your feet and just getting started with something good. Because he needs help.”

“The court’s not exactly backing him right now. He doesn’t have a lot of options. We’re trying to keep it quiet so the court doesn't blacklist me.”

“Oh, so he knows he’s bringing trouble down on you, but he’s doing it anyway? Nobody in the court may know - and to be honest, I kind of doubt that - but you have to know people here see that you’ve got Hivesong swinging by your store. That word’s out. And not everyone views it kindly.”

“What, so if I help him, I’m not only in trouble with Hivesong, but Lowtown’s pissed as well?”

“You know as well as I do how people around here think of the court. The Old King left a long shadow. Plenty of people he hurt. I don’t need to tell you.”

Hongjoong is running long lines of paint across his ribs and down his stomach. Yunho finds himself tensing up to stop from flinching away at the tickling sensation.

“You’re too nice to people, Yunho, and they take advantage. He’s not your friend, he’s just someone with a problem finding you temporarily useful.”

“I know we’re not close.” I don’t know what he is to me, anymore. What I am to him. “But we were. We used to be. And I still care enough about him to want to get him out of whatever mess he’s dug himself into.” 

“He’s likely using that against you.”

_Just look at me the way you did when I walked in._

The brush tickles lightly over his stomach and he stifles a yelp. “Actually, he tried to make me leave when I got hurt. But either way, I don’t care. I’m helping him.”

“Because you used to be friends?”

“Because he’s the one who saved our family.”

The brush pauses as Hongjoong draws away. 

“You never told me much about that.”

“There’s not a lot to say. My mother was a healer, one of the Old King’s strongest aura-workers. He wanted her to do something she wasn’t happy with. She refused, and he seemed okay with that. At first.”

Mingi had been a member of the Old King’s council. At sixteen, youngest ever court poet, his appointment had been something of a joke, meant to rile the other councillors. The Old King treated him like some kind of overgrown pet that did clever tricks for attention. Everyone had expected him to say the wrong thing and end up buried under the hives. But against the odds, he had walked that tightrope with an eerie grace.

“When the King changed his mind, when things got bad… when he sent the maggies to bring my mother in, Mingi got to us first.” 

It wasn’t the first time he’d made the stupidly reckless night climb up to the third floor balcony, to clamber in through Yunho’s bedroom window. But this time he’d been out of breath, almost incoherent, and carrying enough coin and jewelry to bribe the dock guards and the ferryman.

They got out just ahead of the maggies and managed to get down to the lake before anyone noticed.

He still remembers Mingi standing on the shore as their boat pulled away, just a dark shape on the beach, watching them go. Last thing he saw of him. 

“He got us out, and he kept them away until we’d left Lowtown. So don’t tell me to leave him alone with this.” 

Hongjoong sighs. “I’d never tell you to walk away from someone in need. Especially someone who got you out of that place in one piece. I’m just saying… be careful.”

“I’m a hunter,” he says lightly. “It goes with the job.”

“Not careful of the ghost, idiot.” He taps Yunho’s shoulder to show that he can drop his arm. 

Yunho puts it down carefully, making sure not to brush the itchy slick of paint across his ribs.

“You like him a lot. Even Jongho saw it. But that place that almost wrecked your family - he’s still there. He’s still a part of it.”

“It’s a different place, these days. The Queen is different.”

But the image that flashes through his mind is of Mingi, swallowing Soyeon’s hell-brew last night. Lost inside who knows what sort of memory, just to make a party more entertaining. 

“The manners might be prettier and the lights might be twinklier, but it’s still a snake pit, right? 

Someone set a bound ghost on your boy, and I can’t help but notice he’s not asking the Queen for help.”

“He’s not my boy.”

“That’s kind of my point, Yunho. He belongs to the court. Even if they don’t want him right now, he’s theirs. Not yours. You can’t trust him.”

“I don’t have to trust him. I just want to help him.”

Hongjoong looks at him with a level gaze. “We’re done here.” He drops his brush back into the water pot. Smiles, but there’s an edge to it. “The trap, I mean. The trap is done.”

 _I’ll be careful_ , he wants to say. But he just nods. Because maybe he won’t be. He’s not so sure, anymore, when it comes to Mingi.

“So how about you tell me why your aura looks like it’s been chewed on by wild dogs, and how you got that new decoration?” 

Hongjoong indicates the bandage on his arm, and Yunho realises he’s still got the enamel butterfly pin holding it all together.

He runs through the fight for Hongjoong, not sparing himself from detailing everything that surprised him, everything he almost screwed up. The runesmith takes a look at the near-destroyed ward, but doesn’t have anything to offer beyond a thoughtful hum. When Yunho tells him about the marks on the ghost’s fingers, and the way she latched onto his makeshift bone blade to pull energy from his aura, he looks both troubled and intrigued.

“You went up against a bound ghost without your own blade?” Hongjoong cuffs him lightly on the head. “You’re smarter than that.”

“I’ll have it tonight. Figured out a way to get it past the maggies.”

“You’d better.” He still looks unimpressed.

“No, I’ll have it, I promise. I’m going to get Mingi to smuggle it in. They only search me. He’s still one of theirs.” Like you said.

Hongjoong’s lips purse. “But you said it felt like she was using the knife to pull energy out of you?”

“It hurt her, but yeah, felt like that. She used the connection between us somehow, or the nyx did. She was dragging out far more than I was running through the blade.”

“What would have happened, if the letter opener hadn’t broken?”

He shrugs. “She might have stopped if the pain got too much for her, or she got too weak. But… I might have blacked out, too.” Given her Mingi on a plate, with an almost useless ward the only thing standing between the unconscious poet and the ghost. He rubs at his face with a groan. “So using my own blade might kill us both if I can’t find a way to stop the nyx using it to drain my aura. But without it, I can’t defend Mingi, especially if she hits his ward again.”

“Okay, do me a favour? I want to try something. Take out your knife?”

Hongjoong inks the pen he used to design the ghost trap. His gaze vanishes somewhere, deep in thought, before he inks a quick series of runes across the tips of his fingers. 

Yunho slips his knife from its sheath. The weight is familiar and comfortable, runes waking to his energy with the lightest touch. 

The runesmith waves his hand through the air a few times to dry the ink, reaches out small fingers and closes them delicately around the blade. 

The small current of energy Yunho is feeding into the blade responds softly to the runesmith’s aura, but there’s none of the drama associated with touching a ghost. 

“Yunho, I just need to check you’re okay with me trying something out on you. It's not, strictly speaking, entirely ethical, but it might help you out tonight.” 

“Sure. Do it. I trust you.”

Hongjoong shifts his fingers on the blade. Yunho feels a soft tug at the energy surrounding him. The room turns slightly colder. With his aura-sight on, he can see his own already patchy aura dim slightly, and a corresponding flare of blue-green in Hongjoong’s amber aura. 

The feeling cuts off abruptly as the runesmith takes his hand off the knife. “Was that what it felt like?”

“It was a lot quicker. Rougher. Took a lot more out of me. But I think so, yeah.”

Hongjoong holds up his hand and wiggles the fingers. The runes are dark slashes across his fingertips. “Old nyx trick. They use it as a punishment. Or to feed each other up for a big piece of magic.” 

His fingers look just like the ghost’s, cut with magic. Using the bone knife on her, with those runes carved onto her, he’s basically holding hands with the nyx. There’s a cheerful thought.

“The good news is, I know how to turn it back on them. I can draw something that will let you steal from them instead.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“Apart from the fact you’re not going to like having an aura riddled with nyx filth? It’ll taint whatever you do for the next night or two, until it bleeds off. It’s not ideal.” 

He says it lightly, but the past is there, not far behind him.

“That rush of someone else’s energy is also going to make it difficult to control your own aura. It’s going to be tough to mimic another aura. Maybe impossible.”

“So I can either mimic Mingi to lure the ghost, or protect myself from the energy theft?”

“I said _maybe_ impossible. You’ve got such a strong natural ability as a mimic, and you’ve worked hard to increase your stamina with aura-work. If anyone can do it, it’d be you.” Hongjoong shrugs. “It might help if you know his aura well.”

Yunho grins, ducking his head to hide the blush that he can feel warming his face. He’s not sure what’s more embarrassing, getting praise from Hongjoong or admitting to himself how ridiculously well he knows Mingi’s aura.

“It’s going to be a last resort, though. Give me your hand.”

Yunho lays his right hand on the work bench, palm upwards. Hongjoong starts to draw on him.

“You should probably know that nyxes use pain.” His tone is conversational. “To focus, and to psych themselves up for a tough piece of work. The spells they use… If you do end up with their energy in your aura, you’re going to feel it. Just so you’re prepared.”

A small noise makes Yunho look up, careful not to interrupt the runesmith’s work. 

Mingi is in the doorway, wrapped in Hongjoong’s colourful quilt, puffy face and messy bed-hair making him look a million miles away from the stylish Lakesider who’d come into his shop just a day ago. His gaze is stuck on the runes painted across Yunho’s torso. When he finally meets Yunho’s eyes, he still looks flushed from sleep and slightly dazed.

“I’ve never seen a ghost trap before. It’s… beautiful.” His voice is rough, lower than usual.

“Hongjoong’s the best.”

“Yeah, he’s good. It’s good.” He wraps the quilt more tightly around himself.

“Yunho, you want to try the energy exchange? I want to see if it works okay for you.”

He waves his hand to dry the ink. Mingi’s eyes follow the motion sleepily, then drift back to the ghost trap. 

“What do I have to do?”

Hongjoong passes him the hilt of the bone knife.

“The knife is already set up to transfer energy, usually yours to the ghost, to repel her. This makes a two-way connection. You can’t draw energy from the ghost, because it’s a different form of energy. But you should be able to take energy from anything living through that connection.”

It goes against everything that they learned at school. Everything his mother - the most ethical aura-worker he knows - has ever taught him. He’s only ever given energy, never taken it. Stolen it from somebody. 

“Are you sure - this is okay?” he asks Hongjoong. 

He lifts his fingers off the knife for a moment. Distantly, he sees that his hands are still steady as ever, despite what he’s about to do. Feels queasy at his own calmness. 

“There’s a difference between taking without asking, and being given freely.” Again, he senses that shadow of Hongjoong’s past over his shoulder. “I’m okay with it, Yunho. It’s better that you practice here, amongst friends.” His look at Mingi is a faint challenge.

Yunho closes his hand around the knife again, and after giving him a moment, Hongjoong takes hold of the blade. His aura is golden warm, with a darker core of rich reddish-brown underlying it. 

“The best way to try it is if you work the runes like usual. I’m going to pull a little energy from you, and the moment you feel that, you pull back. Try to take it slow, but don’t worry if you take too much, you need a top-up anyway. The worst you can do is put me to sleep.” He smiles with a delicate flash of teeth. “You actually can’t kill someone like this.” 

Yunho breathes deeper, trying to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach and focus on what he needs to learn, rather than the thought that Hongjoong might have tried to kill someone once. 

He feeds his energy into the blade. It’s so much better than the letter opener, they work so smoothly together. He feels that tug again, not unlike someone taking his hand gently and pulling him off balance slightly. A thread of his warm sea-green energy spools out through Hongjoong’s amber aura. 

He braces himself, reaches for it, pulls it hesitantly back towards himself, but it’s slippery, it keeps slipping away through his hand.

“Through the knife,” says Hongjoong. His eyes are sliding silver as he watches their auras shifting. “It’s the channel for the exchange.”

He reaches again for that thread of blue-green and pulls it back through the blade. He can feel the burn of faint resistance as Hongjoong braces himself on the other side. Pulls harder. 

He can feel the moment when he gets enough traction and the energy starts to flow back to him. At first it’s just his own familiar energy, but then, twined around it, the warm, sparky energy from Hongjoong’s aura floods into him, prickling him like standing in a cloud of fireflies. 

It feels so good that he almost forgets to cut it off, the infusion of new energy. His heart is suddenly racing, he feels light enough to fly away. He drops the knife at the same time that Hongjoong takes a step forward and leans heavily on the work bench.

“Hells, sorry, I didn’t mean to,” he says, but the runesmith waves him off weakly.

“I’m fine, you’re all good. Should have gotten more sleep last night is all.”

“And eaten breakfast,” comes Yeosang’s dry voice from behind them. 

Yunho’s aura is a lot brighter than before. Streaks of Hongjoong’s tiger’s eye golden-brown weave through it, sinuous and beautiful. He feels great. He feels sick.

“Honestly, Yunho, if it helps you get through tonight, I’ll consider it worth it.” Hongjoong’s smile is genuine.

“What just happened?”

Yeosang answers Mingi. “Yunho’s just learned his own new trick. Should help with the ghost fight. It’s completely unethical but considering he’s fighting a nyx, nobody’s going to give much of a shit.”

“It’ll be harder, of course. I let you take my energy. The nyx won’t be so generous. But you should be able to stop the drain, at least. Which means you can protect your wards.”

“Thank you. For everything.” The unwanted energy. The ghost trap, which felt so strong and perfectly designed. For having faith that he could trap a bound ghost and defend himself against a nyx. For two years of patience and support.

Hongjoong props himself up on his elbows. His smile is tired, but impish. “When this is over, come back and talk to me. I’ve got a business proposal for you.”

_______________

_“When hunting a bound ghost, full control of the aura becomes imperative. In order to mimic the haunt victim’s aura and lure the ghost into the trap, the hunter must be able to predict and direct even the slightest movement of the energy patterns in their aura.”_

_~ Handbook for the Novice Hunter_

When the paint has dried, they leave Aurora to head back over the lake. Yeosang has loaned him a pair of black gloves to hide the runes on his fingers; they’re short and tight on his larger hands, but they’ll do to get past the maggies.

Mingi has applied a cease-pain and a new glamour he had stashed away in a pocket. His dark hair now has streaks of bright kingfisher blue and green, and his smoky eyes look moody and unapproachable.

At least they would, if he’d ever stop talking. 

The sleep has given him a new burst of energy and he’s happily chattering away about anything and everything on the way there, laughing hugely with his head thrown back as if to share his delight with everyone. 

Yunho takes the chance to practice shaping his aura as they walk through Lowtown, trying to find a way to work with Hongjoong’s tawny energy. It’s not promising. Like the man himself, the runesmith’s energy likes to go where it pleases, how it pleases. He’s going to have more luck just ignoring it and working with his own energy. Hopefully it will still be enough to lure her in.

He’s still got half an ear on Mingi’s chatter as he works the aura. He now knows the best place in the Tannery to buy good soup. A run-down bar that apparently has the best eel. A tiny basement theatre that hosts pop-up erotic poetry readings. The hidden location of a piece of graffiti on the side of an old warehouse, that turns out to be a quote from one of his poems.

Going up the steep, cobbled side of Dock Hill is like stepping over an invisible marker. As soon as the fence comes in sight, the talking cuts off like Mingi has just hit the silencing spell on the gate. He even carries himself differently here, the easy, almost gangling lope slowing down to something more consciously feline, coming from the hip. 

The maggie on gate duty is close to their age, with a slim-waisted, muscular build accentuated by the stark lines of his black and white uniform. The silvery streak in his black hair is typical maggie plumage. Flashy, monochrome; a warning signal.

His gaze flicks across them, completely impersonal. Yunho holds himself still as the maggie runs his hands lightly around his body without touching, letting the wards skim his aura. They’re rigged to trigger at the presence of weapons. He’s fine. It’ll be fine. The knife’s in Mingi’s pocket. The runes aren’t technically a weapon, they’re a defence.

“Would you mind removing your gloves?”

The maggie’s voice is quiet and respectful, accent a mix of Lowtown and Lakeside that is not unlike Yunho’s. He doesn’t look suspicious, just faintly curious. It means nothing. The maggies can go from curious to out of control in the snap of a finger, if something sets them off.

It’s the royal nectar last night. He didn’t even drink it, and that old memory of pain is right back in his head, where he’s still a seventeen year old boy who can’t quite figure out what he’s done wrong to deserve the beating of his life. Wrong place, wrong time, a couple of touchy maggies. Sometimes it’s just that simple. Hivesong is waking up all the ghosts.

He’s so busy trying not to think about the bone knife under Mingi’s coat and the runes on his fingers that he startles when the poet slings a casual arm around him. Oh shit, that’s right. We’re doing that. That’s our story.

He lets his head fall sideways against Mingi’s. The ability to fake a smile is so far beyond him right now; he hopes whatever’s on his face looks like careless boredom. 

“San,” says Mingi in a voice that is surprisingly whiny, “I just want to get him home. Can you play your games with someone else?”

The maggie smiles. He has adorable dimples. The sinking feeling in Yunho’s stomach increases. 

“Take your gloves off. Please.”

“Is this about Wooyoung - are you punishing me? Because you should seriously be thanking me for moving on from him.”

The dimples are still there, but the maggie’s smile is hardening quickly. Gods know the whine is managing to wind Yunho up, and he’s not even the target. Hells, Mingi. How is this helping?

“Firstly, why would I care? Secondly, you didn’t move on from him, he left you when he finally realised what a fucking liability you were. And thirdly,” to Yunho, “take off your gloves. Now.”

Mingi’s arm drops away from his shoulders and his hand curls around Yunho’s, fingers threading between his. It doesn’t feel like it’s part of the act; it feels like protection. When Mingi speaks again, all traces of a whine are gone. “San. Just let him come with me. I need him.”

“You need him? Give me a break, you don’t need anyone. And he’s not going anywhere until he shows me what he’s hiding.”

“I do need him. Sorry,” he says to Yunho, before opening his coat and letting the maggie see the bone blade. “This is his. He’s helping me with a problem.”

Yunho freezes. There’s a packed silence as they stare at the knife. Mingi’s fingers squeezing his own feel very far away.

If this ghost doesn’t kill Mingi, he may have to.

San glances around at the other people on the dock, takes a step closer. His voice is soft. “If you’ve got a problem like that, why didn’t you get the court hunters involved? Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I didn’t know who to trust. Still don’t. Hoping I haven’t made the wrong choice here. But we used to be friends, and Wooyoung always liked you.”

The maggie’s looking at Yunho like he can see the runes painted across him, like he’s seeing the hunter for the first time. His eyes are shrewd and thoughtful. 

“It’s not a regular haunting, is it? If you’re bringing someone in. Otherwise you’d just move out of the Red Court.”

“It’s a bound ghost. Look, I know you hate me. I get it, I don’t like me so much either. But if you let Yunho through, just this one night, we can sort it out, I promise. We’re so close.”

“Yunho?” The maggie is staring at him. “Jeong Yunho?”

He nods, wondering what’s coming.

To his slightly breathless surprise, the dimples reappear in a genuine smile. “My dad worked with your mother. In the infirmary. He was always proud to say she trained him.” He pauses. “He helped fix you up, that time. He told me about what happened, when I wanted to join the Magpies. So I’d know what they were, at their worst.” He’s backed off, giving Yunho space. 

“It was a long time ago.” Except it wasn’t, not really. 

San seems to come to some sort of decision. “You know I’m going to have to tell my chief about the haunting. No, just shut up for once,” he tells Mingi. His voice is still quiet, but it carries authority and Mingi actually listens. “If someone’s set a bound ghost on you, that’s a security matter. It’s not just the ghost, we’ve got someone in Hivesong who thinks they can hire a nyx to solve their problems.” 

He looks at Yunho, face serious. “I’ll give you tonight. Get the ghost sorted, if you can. The Magpies are changing, the Queen’s making sure of that, but some of them are still prone to… overreact. Get rid of whatever’s on your hands by tomorrow, okay?”

“I won’t be here tomorrow. If this works.” He feels Mingi stir beside him, fingers flexing against his.

San smiles again. “Then I’m glad I got the chance to meet you. Good hunting.”

  
  
  


The flowers and lights from the first nectar party are gone from the lake today. The boat ride is mostly silent; with the boatman there, Yunho can’t talk to Mingi about anything meaningful, and he’s in no mood to talk for the sake of talking. He turns the idea of a maggie with a moral compass over and over in his head, and finds he can’t quite trust in it. It’s too big for him to deal with right now.

The egg roll feels like a distant memory and he’s already hungry again. When they get to Hivesong, Mingi takes him through the palace dining halls so that they can gather up a stash of food to take back to the Red Court. His aura is starting to heal, and he’s always been fast to repair it, but he needs to feed it up to get ready for nightfall.

The sky is still bright with the last of the late afternoon sun when they head across the gardens to the Red Court, Yunho loaded down with supplies like a pack-horse. The gardens look different in the daylight, all benign sunlight and a scent of fresh flowers. The pear blossoms drift through the air like fragrant snow, and the hedge maze looks shaggy and cute, like an overgrown pet.

The Red Court, though, is as dilapidated and sad-looking as he remembers it all those years ago. Time has weathered the mottled plaster walls to a faded pink. Although the remaining glazed roof tiles are still bright scarlet, they’re patchy, like a gap-toothed mouth. 

Bespelled lanterns hang around the ground floor windows, evidence of the few people still living there. There’s a piece of purple cloth blowing from one open window, as a makeshift curtain. He can smell frying meat coming from a half-open door leading onto the courtyard. Apart from those few small signs of life, it looks like what it is; a half-abandoned building, home to the few strays that Hivesong doesn’t care to welcome in anywhere else.

Mingi’s rooms are four floors up. Yunho only loses one pawpaw on the way upstairs, but he ends up with a plate of chicken legs and a couple of coconut cream buns cradled into the front of his shirt, and a loaf of bread awkwardly squashed up under his chin. 

Mingi tries to shake out a cloth to put down on the floor for the food, but he can’t quite manage it one-handed. 

“How did you even get me up here last night, with a busted hand?”

“I woke up one of the downstairs guys and asked him to help carry you. Nobody asks too many questions around here, I just told him you were drunk. Speaking of which.” He pulls out a bottle of dessert wine from his coat, and holds it out to Yunho.

“I’m working, remember?”

“Sure, can you open it for me, though?” He holds up the bandaged hand again. Away from the dining halls, from the need to play at being on top of the world, the lines of strain on his face are more noticeable.

Yunho uncorks the bottle and hands it back to Mingi. 

Yeosang’s ward is just visible in the dip of his shirt against his smooth, tawny skin. Yunho can feel the precise pulse of the ward’s energy from here.

“Cheers.” Mingi stops with the bottle raised halfway to his mouth. “I’m okay to drink a little, right? It’s not going to screw up what happens tonight?”

“As long as you stay conscious, we should be okay.”

Mingi throws a look at him. “You know I can hold my drink.”

“Actually, I seem to remember I could drink you under the table any day, lightweight.” 

The food smells so good, he can’t wait any more. He piles everything into some sort of demonic sandwich; chicken, pawpaw, chilli sauce, coconut cream bun and all. 

Mingi’s grinning, eyes almost closed. “I used to pretend to drink, most of the time. It was safer. Hivesong’s never been a good place to let your guard down.” He throws his coat across the bed and lounges back against the wall, cradling the bottle in the crook of his arm and a plate of food on his lap. “Funny what people would tell you when they thought you were utterly trashed, though. Pretend to throw up on someone’s boots and suddenly you’re friends for life.”

“Wait, so all that drunken singing - you’re going to tell me you were sober? There is no godly excuse for that.”

“I have a beautiful singing voice! It’s… dramatic. Full of feelings.”

“It almost got us arrested.”

Mingi’s head goes back in that silent laugh. “Oh yeah, I remember that. The Old King was giving Minnie shit about something that night. Something she did that riled the bees. I just wanted to cheer her up.”

“Your singing, though. Mingi, it’s never going to make a bad situation better.” 

With a truly terrible attempt at stealth, they’d made their way into the cloistered inner palace gardens near midnight, to serenade Minnie from under her bedroom window. Yunho had started off charitably trying to harmonize with the heartfelt pained-cat yowls beside him, but by the end had been reduced to red-faced, hysterical giggles, staggering around amongst the rose bushes, trying to breathe. “I’m not surprised Soyeon called the maggies on us.” He’d barely been able to walk at that stage, let alone outrun a couple of maggies, motivational as getting chased had been.

“I didn’t know Soyeon would be staying over with her! If it had just been Minnie, we would have been fine. Soyeon was too busy trying to be a badass by then, but Minnie was so into you she would have just laughed it off.”

“Into me? What, Minnie?”

Mingi snorts inelegantly. “Oh my, Jeong Yunho! Yes, Minnie. Her and everyone else.”

“Like anyone noticed me when you were around.”

“I can’t help it if people have basic tastes. Apparently your wholesome kindness appealed to people more than my fabulousness.” Mingi rustles amongst the papers for more food. “Makes sense, when you think about it. There’s a fuck ton of fabulousness at court to compete with. Not a whole lot of kindness though. You were weird enough to get noticed.”

Your _face_ is weird.

He bites back the automatic reply. Sometimes being with Mingi again is like a swift dropkick back to being seventeen. 

Mouth full of messy but strangely satisfying sandwich, he searches Mingi’s coat pockets for the warding gear he’s tucked away in the little hidden pockets all over; a vial of blood-ink, ward parchment and steel-nibbed pens. He can ward the place while he eats. A little grease won’t hurt them.

The light wards go onto the table, on the walls, on the door. Enough that he should be able to reach one, no matter what’s happening. It helps that the space is so small.

“Anyway, I’m glad you’ve still got people around you who love you,” says Mingi. “The one who painted the trap. That other one, the quiet one with the face.” He swallows a mouthful of wine. “You know he warned me about you?”

“Who, Yeosang? Warned you about what?”

He looks up at the silence that meets his question. Mingi’s got a funny look on his face, kind of wry, like he’s tasted something bitter. “He wanted to make sure you didn’t get hurt helping me out.”

He gets the feeling Mingi’s not referring to the ghost. “They know I’ve got history with the court.”

“No, it’s good. I’m happy you’ve got people looking out for you. You deserve a good life.”

“What, and you don’t?”

“What makes you think I don’t have a good life? I mean, bound ghost aside.”

The way people went out of their way last night to break the unspoken rule about talking to you, just so they could laugh at you or yell at you. The way people _look_ at you.

Mingi won’t want his pity. “It’s this place,” he says helplessly, meaning Hivesong, meaning everything that’s wrong here.

“I’ll bounce back from this. This,” he gestures at the bare room, the neglected Red Court, “this is just a hiccup. It’s my mistake. I knew the Old King, I could judge him to a fine line. Soyeon’s tougher because she seems more reasonable. You think you can reason with her. But she’s the crown. I was an idiot.”

He tries to jam the cork back in the bottle one-handed and can’t quite manage it. Gives up, and takes out a cease-pain instead. 

“I’m glad you got out. But I belong here. Me and this place…” He shrugs. “We are what we are. It’s okay. I’ll be back on top in no time. I’ve come through worse.” He scrubs at his face. “Sorry, I’m talking too much. I just hate sitting here, waiting for it to get dark so she can show. Distract me. How’s the prep going?”

_We are what we are._

Yunho shakes himself a little. Change of subject, okay, fair enough. He’s just finished with the last of the light wards. “Take a look.”

He pushes a scrap of energy through each, testing the faint pulse of shimmering sea-green light that shines out from each.

“Pretty,” says Mingi, softly. “That’s you, right? That’s what you look like?” He waves his hand along his body, where his aura burns warm and bright. 

“What’s _this_ meant to be?” Yunho mimics the flutter of Mingi’s fingers, laughing despite himself. 

“Your aura, dumbass! I can’t see it, I don’t know. I always imagine it’s like…” and he flutters his fingers again, helplessly. “Magic. Sparkly.”

“Sparkly.” 

“Shut up.”

Yunho takes pity on him and pushes a little more energy through the light ward, sustaining the glow for a moment. “Yeah, that’s what it looks like. My aura.” 

All at once, he feels shy. Oddly, more shy than he felt when Mingi was checking out the ghost trap with so much attention. Come to think of it though, the look on his face now is similar. Kind of soft, but there’s a heat in his eyes, too. Yunho’s not quite sure what to do with that.

He turns back to the ward he’s working on, certain that the pink tinge of his ears and cheeks is making his confused thoughts painfully obvious.

“You know what I remember?” Mingi’s voice is quiet, like half of him is still back in the past. The happier part of it, by the looks of things. “That time you decided you wanted to enter the poetry competition for the full moon festival.”

He was wrong. This is not the happy past. Yunho focuses on the ward he’s building to make a safe space for them to retreat to. “Mingi, I still have nightmares about that.”

“You wrote something for it, do you remember? Some sort of moon poem?”

He’d spent a week trying to summon some sort of original poetic spirit. Sitting out in the gardens all night, looking at stars while the mosquitos played hell with him. He’d ended up scratchy and raw, and screwed for inspiration. The words had practically been written in his own sweat and blood. He’d been driven on by a vivid picture in his mind; standing on the stage with the crowd around him, amazed at his insight. Mingi, impressed in spite of himself, face turning gentle and admiring. He remembers thinking that, so clearly it might have been yesterday. _Mingi will love this. He’s going to love this._

“And then,” says Mingi, “the full moon rolls around, everyone’s gathered ready to hear, and they decide to make it freestyle verse about the ocean.” 

“Good times.” Focus on the runes. The runes don’t surprise him like that, they’re orderly and predictable and he loves them just the way they are.

“Do you remember your poem?”

He dips the pen and inks carefully. “Are you kidding? That shit’s buried deep.” 

The only thing he remembers about that whole night was the unhappy discovery that your heart could beat so hard it felt like it was going to explode from your throat. His memory of the poem itself had thankfully disappeared long ago.

“The look on your face. Like you couldn’t work out whether to faint or throw up. I thought I was going to have to carry you off the stage. And then… you just start talking.”

“And it was amazing, right?”

“Yunho. No. It was terrible. You’re not a poet. You really don’t remember?”

“I really don’t.”

“Huh. That explains a lot.” His voice is thoughtful. 

Yunho looks up. Mingi’s head is tilted back against the wall, eyes closed. “Explains what?”

“ _I’ll follow you, like the seas follow the moon. I’ll retreat and return, full of light._ You don’t recognize it?”

“It’s from the poem you performed last year, at the coronation.”

Mingi grins tiredly. “I knew you were a fan. Actually, that line is taken from a longer work by the lesser known poet, Jeong Yunho.”

“Hang on - what? You stole my poem?”

“I borrowed a couple of lines from your poem! And it wasn’t a theft, it was a tribute. You were such a hardass, getting up on that stage despite everything they threw at you. Before the coronation… things weren’t exactly easy, those last months with the Old King. I just wanted to borrow some of your courage.” He’s screwed up the used cease-pain and he’s throwing it, catching it, over and over. “Besides, I had this crazy thought that wherever you were, you’d hear the coronation poem and you’d know.”

“Know what, that you stole my best words and pretended they were yours?”

“Know that I was thinking about you. That I remembered you.”

He tosses the used spell into the remains of the food wrappers. “Oh, coconut buns. I forgot we had those.” He’s not looking at Yunho. 

It was funny, because it had been barely a week after the coronation that he’d sent that letter to Mingi. Not because of some half-assed poem that he couldn’t even remember, but because they’d just moved back to Lowtown, and seeing him perform for the first time in two years had brought all the old feelings flooding right back like he’d never left. He’d been so proud of him. Missed him so much. 

Loved him. So much.

 _Fuck_. 

He’s frozen, sure Mingi is going to look up and catch the thought in his eyes. But he’s too intent on trying to empty the last crumbs of toasted coconut out of the paper wrapper and into his mouth. He catches Yunho staring.

“What?”

“Safe space!” It’s the first thing to come into his head. Feels like his face is on fire. “I need to make us one. I have wards.”

“Good plan. See, that’s why you’re the hunter and I’m the poet. Play to your strengths.”

He can’t love him. How stupid would that be? What kind of a masochistic idiot would he have to be?

He’s a whole mess, Song Mingi, even when he’s not being haunted, not an outcast, not lounging around with shreds of toasted coconut down the front of his shirt. His open-necked shirt that Yunho has spent the last few hours wanting to slide a hand into, while he kisses slowly down the line of his throat to his collarbones, to see if the smooth skin tastes as good as it looks.

_Oh great hells._

Because as well as being as sexy as fuck, he’s also brave, and funny, and as smart as he is talkative. And so, so fiercely loyal to the people he cares about. Which, yeah.

 _You complete dumbass_ , he thinks, and he means it like never before.

Mingi’s never going to leave Hivesong, and Yunho is never going to set foot in it after tomorrow, if he can help it.

He needs to get through tonight. With every scrap of brain he can muster focused on the ghost. Why wasn’t this in the textbook though, seriously? How to maintain focus when you’ve just realised you’re in love with your best friend. Former best friend. Haunt client.

Get your fucking head in the game, Jeong Yunho, or you’re not even going to _have_ a best friend/former best friend/haunt client to be so stupidly, desperately in love with. 

He looks wildly around him, assessing. Head in the game. Okay, you can do this. Safe space. In this bare box of a room, there’s only really one option that’s the right size for a safe space. 

Mingi’s wardrobe is enormous, a wooden monstrosity painted with herons standing at the edge of a lake. For a moment, he considers turning the wardrobe into a safe space, but the thought of trying to cram one or maybe even both of them into it during a fight doesn't bear thinking about. 

However, it sits just far enough away from the corner of the room that there’s a space beside it that can be warded closely on three sides. He unrolls and applies his strongest ghost wards onto both walls and the side of the wardrobe. He can feel the harmonious song of energy as their interlocking protections meet across the front of the warded space. He’s careful not to look at Mingi, to keep his voice light.

“This is where I need you to go if things don’t go right tonight, okay? This corner. It’ll help keep her out.”

“I’m warded, though, right?”

Honesty. “I’ve seen her chew through a ward. I don’t know if we can rely on it holding. She should be going after me, but if for some reason she doesn’t, and I tell you to get over here, you need to do it.”

“What do you mean, she should be going after you?”

“That’s how this works. I draw her out. I’m the trap, remember? It’s kind of like possession, but she’s in the trap, she’s not in control. I’m still the one in charge.”

“She can’t possess you, though, right? You’ve got that tattoo.”

Honesty is a bitch. Hongjoong has nullified the tattoo for as long as he’s wearing the trap, because it affects his ability to catch the ghost. It stops him answering for a moment, and Mingi sees it. His tone is tightly controlled. “Right. Okay.”

“I just need you to go here if I tell you to.” Or if you think I’m not the one in the driver’s seat any more.

Mingi’s staring out the window. “Is it getting darker? We should light the lamps.” 

He clears away the last of the papers from the food and busies himself lighting the lamps on the table. The shadows flicker and dance around the trembling of his hand. 

“Just two, okay? Leave the rest.”

The darker it gets, the sooner she’ll come. He can feel it. Mingi hovers near the table like he can’t bring himself to leave the faint circles of light. 

Yunho seats himself cross-legged on the floor, next to the makeshift safe space. He’s within easy reach of a couple of light wards and his bone blade is in his lap. He pats the floor next to him.

“Come sit here.” He needs to get started with his aura, and he can’t focus with Mingi fidgeting around like that, it makes him distracted. More distracted.

Mingi comes over reluctantly and throws himself down next to Yunho. “I hate this waiting. I mean, I know we need her here, but just waiting for it…”

Yunho tunes him out for a moment as he slips into second sight, caught up again in the beauty of Mingi’s aura, memorizing the familiar dips and flares of the energy. His own aura still has swatches of Hongjoong’s energy running through it. He runs through some basic energy shifts, feeling the slight stick and stretch where Hongjoong’s unfamiliar energy interferes with the movement.

When he focuses again, he sees that Mingi’s chewing on his lips, an old nervous habit. 

“This is stopping tonight, you know that, right?” he says. “We’ll catch her, you just need to get through this. Hey, so. Is it okay if I touch your hand?”

It’s not going to help his concentration any, but it might help the aura-work, and he needs Mingi to be calm. He can see him coming slowly but steadily apart as the room gets darker.

The look Mingi gives him seems more on edge, if anything, but he nods.

Yunho puts his hand on top of Mingi’s good hand, twines his fingers through. Where their auras touch and weave, he focuses on matching the energy pattern. His sun-warm green grows brighter and wilder around their joined hands, more intense. It’s like stretching a muscle, the satisfying sense of exertion.

He feels Mingi’s sigh through his body. “Yunho, I wanted to go with you.”

When Hongjoong’s energy is pulled into the weave it reacts unpredictably, pushes the balance off. He’s just going to have to work around it. Mingi’s fingers tighten on his and he looks up, aura-sight sliding away at the expression on the poet’s face. He’s never seen Mingi look so defenceless.

“When you asked me to go with you, I would have given anything to be able to go.” His smile is crooked. “You were the only good thing in my life. I would have followed you anywhere.”

Like the seas follow the moon.

“Then why didn’t you?” His own voice sounds rusty. He’s held onto this question for so long.

Mingi doesn’t speak for a moment. He’s staring across the room at the gathering darkness outside. “Do you remember when I got appointed to council? I was sixteen, and you were so proud of me. You thought it was the best thing, ever. You told me, the Old King might think he’s just doing it to annoy the others, but you show him better. Show him what you can do.”

Mingi didn’t have any family at court by then - his parents had been killed in one of the endless border wars Hivesong had been fighting since both of them were kids - and Yunho remembers trying to be three times as proud, to make up for all the boasting Mingi’s parents wouldn’t get to do. Even though his own mother had quietly tried to tell him that being on the council wasn’t exactly a blessing.

“There was a public ceremony, and that night the Old King took me on a private tour of the hives. You know how they joke about burying people under there – do the wrong thing, and you’ll end up feeding the Swarm?”

Mingi’s hand in his is sweating, clammy. Yunho wants to tell him it’s okay, forget I asked, you don’t have to talk about this I was wrong I’m sorry. 

“It’s not a joke, Yunho. He showed me where they are. He’d hired nyxes, and the ghosts are all still there. He called them his Secret Council. Told me there was always room for another seat at the table, and they might like someone who could make them laugh. They were so _angry_. He said to me, you be a good boy, Song Mingi, you keep my secrets and do what you’re told, and we’re alright.”

“I didn’t know,” Yunho says. It’s pitiful, but it’s true. “I would never have asked you to come if I’d known he’d try to kill you.”

Mingi looks honestly confused for a moment, then squeezes Yunho’s hand. His eyes are suspiciously bright. “No, you don’t get it. I wasn’t so scared of dying, by then. But if he came after me because of all the things I knew, he would have dragged you and your family back too. Just because he could, and because he likes – he liked – hurting people. If I stayed, I could keep him away. Keep him busy.” He ducks his head. “And I did it, right?”

“Yeah, Mingi, you did,” says Yunho. That night they’d left, a small, jealous voice had whispered that Mingi had just loved Hivesong more. He can’t begin to imagine everything Mingi had to give up to stay here. “You kept us all safe. But I missed you so much. All the time.”

The poet’s voice is a husky whisper. “Yeah, I missed you too.”

He’s very aware of how close they are, of Mingi’s hand in his. He doesn’t want to misunderstand what’s happening here, but he also wants very much to lean forward, close the small gap between them and kiss him. 

He wants to kiss the taut sadness off Mingi’s mouth, kiss him until he doesn’t say things like _I belong here_. Kiss him until he’s full of light and free to follow Yunho, this time.

He leans in gently, and Mingi’s mouth is next to his, soft breath mingling with his. When their lips finally meet it’s hesitant, like Yunho is asking a question he hopes he knows the answer to. Mingi tastes of coconut and sweet wine, but even sweeter is that feeling of _finally_. Oh gods, that mouth on his.

Then he feels, actually feels Mingi smile against his lips, hears a breath that could almost be his name, and the kiss becomes something else. Something deeper, slower, with more intent. Mingi’s hand threads into the back of his hair and grips him gently as his tongue slides along Yunho’s. His mouth is slick and hot and Yunho is almost too lost in the sensation to register the slow pulse of fear that starts to spike in him.

Almost, but not quite. He pulls away and Mingi moves to follow him. Yunho puts a hand on his chest. The feeling of fear swells as the temperature in the room starts to drop. 

“She’s coming.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can reach me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/nelliedae) to chat about Ateez or writing whenever :)


	3. Chapter 3

The rich, damp smells of earth and stone, of things long buried, rise around them. Shadows press in on the circles of lamplight; the night outside the windows is dark as slate. 

He hears her now, drawing out the sound of Mingi’s name in a voice like the rasping of stone on stone, full of a slow, patient hunger. Mingi makes a small noise, drawing his knees up to his chin and pressing himself back against the wall, as far as he can go. 

A flickering movement catches Yunho’s eye and she’s there, under the table by the window, on her hands and knees, head down, swaying. Her fingertips are vivid and raw as she begins to creep towards them in stutters and bursts.

He starts to shape his aura in response, working swiftly as he can. He ignores Hongjoong’s stubborn flows of energy and works instead with what he can control, firing up his own aura higher and brighter until it _sings_ with power, just like Mingi’s. There’s a beauty in matching so well, even as he feels the first hints of strain at the effort. 

She doesn’t care. She’s not coming for him, not even looking at him. She fades out, fades back in, and each time she’s closer. All of her attention is on Mingi, and only him.

Last night, though, last night he had her interest. The only thing that’s changed since then is Hongjoong’s energy, screwing with the pattern. He tries to pull it in along with the rest, but the mix of energies messes with his control. The shreds of amber energy resist him effortlessly, flowing their own way. It’s like trying to dam a river with his fingers.

She darts forwards to reform in the air above Mingi, leaning over him with the black stain of her mouth hung open on his name. Close to, her rage has the force of a scream but what’s left of her voice is a broken intimate crackle in his ears. Mingi is breathing in shallow bursts, breath clouding the cold air. His eyes flick wide towards Yunho as her hand brushes over the new ward beneath his shirt. 

Yeosang’s ward holds steady for a moment - then begins to dim. 

No, no, _no_. Come for _me_ , not him, fuck it.

Mingi reaches out blindly for him and Yunho slides over closer.

Just like that, her hand stills on the ward. Even though he can’t see her face, he feels her attention shift towards him. Finally. _Finally_. He doesn’t know what’s caught her interest now - Hongjoong’s energy is still doing its own sweet thing - but he plays the aura out for her like a lure, trying to call her to him.

She reaches out, and this time he’s got no ward to deflect her. Her touch against the tattoo on his chest lingers, bitterly cold, and for a moment he’s sure he has her. Then with a soundless snap she’s back to Mingi, pattering on his ward.

“I thought you said she’d go for you!” Mingi’s voice is full of barely contained fear.

“She’s supposed to!” Somehow she can tell them apart and she isn’t interested in him, even when he’s defenseless. She’s supposed to be hunting the energy patterns, but there’s something else going on here. She _knows_. The nyx, it has to be. Somehow the nyx has given her the ability to tell them apart.

“She’s not going to get me, right?”

Mingi’s ward is guttering out like a candle in a strong wind. He gives it less than a minute.

“Do I get in the safe space?” He’s trying to stay calm but Yunho can feel him trembling. “Yunho?”

“Go!”

He’s dimly aware of Mingi scrambling away towards the safe space. Good.

She throws herself against the barrier of the safe space wards, fingers scrabbling for Mingi. Like a bad dream, Yunho sees the runework she’s channeling catch at the edge of one of his three ghost wards. A dark stain starts to spread across the runes, eating at them with its corruption. He can feel it losing energy slowly but steadily. If one goes down, the other two won’t hold, they’ll be too unstable.

He’s got no choice; he picks up the knife and swings it through her to stop her. It catches on the way through and again he gets that sense of a connection made against his will, a heavy bolt slotting home. The nyx fastens onto his aura and starts to drag the energy from him away down the plane of his blade. 

But this time, he knows what he’s looking for. The bright thread of his aura unravels swiftly into the ghost, vanishing into the dark haze of her body. He reaches for it, feels it slide away from him, rough and burning. It’s like grabbing a running cable with bare hands. Hongjoong’s runes are warm on his fingers as he fights to slow it and drag it back through the knife. 

Everything just _hurts_. The ghost is a fierce and furious cloud of darkness, caught and struggling on the blade, weakening too slowly. The nyx is reeling in Yunho’s energy with what feels like claws hooked hard through his aura. And as he finally gains traction and starts to pull his own energy back towards him, the nyx’s energy comes along with it.

It’s a beautiful cold green with the bright clarity of an emerald, but it feels like he’s falling into an endless, clinging pool of filth. It hits him with the raw sting of an abrasion, scouring his skin all over. He finds himself on his knees, blade still driven into the ghost, gasping for air. 

He tries to drop the knife but can’t; they’re trapped together, the hunter, the ghost and the nyx. This time, when the nyx hauls on his aura, he can feel the energy start to slide back through the knife again. The pain’s so all-consuming he can’t even feel the knife hilt under his fingers anymore. Even so, he fights as hard as he can to keep hold of the stinging energy caked around him. Feels like he’s drowning in green. 

Suddenly there’s a blaze of copper-violet and Mingi’s there next him.

The ghost breaks away to fasten onto Mingi’s ward and the rush of energy to the nyx cuts off abruptly as the connection is lost. Yunho drops the knife and just manages to get his hands under him as he falls forwards. 

Mingi grabs him one-handed and drags him backwards into the safe space. They only just fit into the narrow gap between the wardrobe and the wall, with Mingi pinning him against the wall to keep them inside the wards. Yunho’s legs are shaking. 

He has to drop the aura-sight for a moment; the poisonous green whirling around him is like burning acid in the back of his throat, making him sick. It still stings like someone’s sandpapered him all over, but it’s not as fierce as it was when they were connected, him and the nyx.

The ghost has swung back into scraping away at the safe space ward. She seems weaker than before, but it’s only a matter of time before she pulls down their defence. Yunho rests his head on Mingi’s shoulder, trying to think. He can fire up the light wards and chase her away again. Unless, of course, the nyx has primed her with something to resist that, in which case they’re screwed. 

And even if it works, it feels like defeat. They’ll still have to start again, the next time, if they can even get his illicit runes past the maggies.

Mingi pulls back slightly to check his face. “Are you okay?”

He pushes himself upright, one hand on Mingi for balance. “The nyx knew I’d be here. He’s tinkered with her, somehow.” She’s totally absorbed in the ward. “Hold on. I just need to try something.”

He ducks around Mingi out of the safe space, ignoring his protest. As long as he doesn’t have the knife in his hand, he’s safe from the nyx. Probably. 

She doesn’t even look at him, just keeps peeling at the ward with her nails. He shifts into aura-sight again and the emerald green flares into malevolent life around him. Hongjoong’s tiger-bright energy has all been siphoned away by the nyx and his own energy is almost drowned out by the flood of green, but he can still feel it there, ragged around the edges. 

He sweeps it all up as best he can and tries to mimic Mingi’s aura again. The nyx’s energy sticks and resists but is weirdly more malleable than Hongjoong’s. He can make a passable imitation, even though it makes his stomach churn like he’s going to throw up everything he’s eaten today. He sends his aura upwards and outwards, watching the ghost. Her head swivels and the black pits of her eyes scratch at him. Then she’s back to the ward. 

He puts out an arm, blindly, and lets Mingi pull him back into the safe space.

“She knows,” he says. “Somehow she knows it’s not you.”

“What if it _was_ me?”

“If you go out there, she’s got you.”

“No, I mean, what if it was my energy? My aura. Would that help?”

“What do you mean?”

“You can take it, right? With the knife, and those runes you’ve got?” Mingi’s so close, his reassuring solidity blocking him in and holding him upright. “Take my energy.”

“It’s not that easy.” 

“Why not?”

“I’m not going to take your energy!” 

“You’re not taking it. I’m giving it to you.” He feels a warmth on the side of his face. Mingi’s cupping his cheek, thumb stroking over his skin. “Tell me. Honestly. Would it work?”

“I don’t know!” Mingi’s aura. If she’s reading something other than the energy pattern. If she can tell the difference. “Yes. Maybe. It could.”

“Hey, idiot. No guilt.” He clasps the back of Yunho’s neck and brings their foreheads together briefly. His voice is soft and close. “Do it.” He pulls away and presses a swift kiss to Yunho’s forehead. “Best offer you’re going to get tonight.”

The look on his face is too much. Why does he always give everything away, and leave himself with nothing? “How about a trade?”

“Yeah? What are you offering?”

Me, he wants to say. You kissed me like you wanted me. Like you might come with me, if I asked.

But he’s afraid to ask. “You give me your energy, and I’ll let you sing me something if we win. When we win. Our victory song.”

Mingi laughs. “Deal.”

His aura surrounds them, rich and beautiful, an antidote to the sick green whirling. Yunho places a palm on Mingi’s chest and brings the knife up against his hand. The runes on his fingers heat as he fires them up. Gently as he can, he pulls a fine thread of the aura through towards him.

His entire body relaxes into it, and he lets out a long breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. It’s like reaching an unexpected warm current in a bitterly cold ocean. 

Mingi makes a small noise and moves slightly under his hand. He notices Yunho looking and shakes his head. “It’s fine, I’m fine. Just feels weird. Keep going.” 

He can stand more easily now. He wraps the new energy tightly around the green and lets it drown out the swampy darkness, infuse it with life and heat. Mingi is leaning against his palm now, and Yunho can feel his breathing starting to labour a little, but the poet is smiling.

“You still okay?” 

Mingi nods drowsily. “Feels weird. Like you’re putting me to sleep.” His head droops. “Does it look beautiful? My...” his voice tails off and he waves a hand weakly around them, fingers fluttering.

“What, you need compliments?”

Mingi breathes a silent laugh, eyes closed.

“It’s not sparkly, if that’s what you mean. But yeah, it’s beautiful.” _You’re_ beautiful. 

The green energy flares, sending tendrils back up through his aura. _It would be so easy to take everything_ , whispers a small, insistent voice. To just drain all that beauty and life and feel it _burn_ around him. He shifts his fingers off the knife like he’s been stung. The sudden cut-off is dizzying.

His whole body is singing with energy, a heady mix of Mingi’s brilliant fire and the sullen emerald malevolence of the nyx. The room seems both too bright and awash with shadows at the same time. 

Under his hand, Mingi slumps back against the wall. His aura is a mess, like a fire reduced to a few smouldering ashes, patchy with ghost-sign. His eyes open a crack as Yunho rests two fingers along his jaw to check his pulse.

“Still here. Gotta say, I’m usually a more fun date than this. Go, finish this.”

The ghost lifts her head as Yunho steps out of the safe space. He can see his breath hanging in the cold air but Mingi’s traded energy wraps around him like a battered cloak, keeping him warm. 

With Mingi’s energy surrounding him, mimicking his aura should have been so easy. From the moment he starts trying to work the mixed energies though, he has a fight on his hands. The nyx’s energy keeps surging up when he gets Mingi’s patterns working, disrupting everything in its wake. Both of them are hell-bent on dominating the other. 

He fights the green energy down again, bringing all his force to bear on it, but it eludes him each time. Mingi’s energy is so reactive to it, going haywire the moment they come together. 

Leaning on the nyx’s energy is draining him fast, and she’s almost through the safe space ward. He rubs his sweating forehead against his arm. 

Okay, think. _Think_. Fighting’s not working.

So make peace.

Shape them together.

Accept the green power. The desire to take, to win at all costs. You felt it too. Use it.

Accept Mingi’s bright burning power. The willingness to give without return, to challenge, to shine. Wrap it around the green and bring them both together with the threadbare ends of your own aura.

Yunho weaves all three together like wings of energy, soaring around him. Using Mingi for shape and pattern, but bringing in the nyx’s stinging green as fuel and catalyst. His own sea-green as the binding that makes the peace between the two of them.

He can feel the moment when she fixes on him at last. 

Her fingers grow still on the ward and she’s there, suddenly, dark pain scrambling to claw her way inside him. A soundless shriek in his ears. He feels her rage, her grief, and rising over all of that, her bone-deep need to see the light of day one last time. He welcomes her in. Closes the ghost trap around her and hopes the gods are kind enough that she can’t feel the nyx’s energy around them, that she’s escaped that at last.

She beats inside him, fluttering like a second heartbeat. She’s all fury and pain, and he knows he isn’t going to be able to hold her for very long.

The scattered remnants of his own aura start to curl into life again. He drops the shaping, drops the aura-sight, closes his eyes. From behind, Mingi’s arms come around him and his warm, heavy body leans along Yunho’s back.

Mingi’s voice is muffled against his neck. “You did it, you got her.”

“I’ve got her,” he says. “She’s here.” 

The darkness in the room is just darkness, now. The soft absence of light. Safe. For as long as he can keep her under control, anyway.

He turns in Mingi’s arms and wraps himself around him. It’s starting to sink in, and he can feel himself shaking. 

“Nice going, rookie.” There’s pride in Mingi’s husky voice. 

“Sing me something.” He just needs a moment before he can pick up and keep going. “You made a deal, remember?”

There’s a pause and then Mingi starts to sing. Yunho recognizes the song only by its lyrics; it’s his coronation poem set to music, a popular street ballad version. He’s still bad, still can’t carry a tune to save his life, but sung quietly with his mouth in Yunho’s hair, the vibration of Mingi’s low voice travelling through him, it’s okay. It’s more than okay. He could get used to this. 

But not quite yet. Reluctantly, he interrupts before Mingi can murder the high notes of the chorus. “Okay, I should get her to Seonghwa. I need to get back across the lake.” Maggies at the dock, maybe. But he can’t bring himself to care right now.

“Okay, let’s go.” Mingi pulls away but keeps an arm around him, steadying him.

“You don’t have to come.”

“Don’t have to, sure. But you think I’m letting you go alone?” He squeezes Yunho, gently. “You okay to walk?”

They take the stairs slowly. The Red Court at night feels even more empty and abandoned, a lonely world of its own far away from the palace that never sleeps. Mingi’s brought a lamp because nobody’s bothered to put lights on the stairs. The landings yawn onto dark, silent hallways with doors standing ajar. 

They’re crossing the landing two floors down when Mingi stops dead. Yunho feels it a moment later, a soft breath of runework, delicate like lace. Sees a scrap of paper drift down and catch on his clothes.

He can’t move.

He can’t move a muscle, as a man dressed all in black - unfamiliar, young, sweet-faced - detaches from the shadows on the landing and lays a length of rope in a ring around Mingi. Twists of white tied to the rope look like some kind of spell, but he’s never seen this before. An all-too-familiar emerald green haze rises from the rope, but the stranger’s aura is a dense slate blue. It's not the nyx, but whoever he is, he’s using the nyx's runework.

He lays a second circle of rope around Yunho, separating them off by a short gap. When he plucks the scrap of paper off Yunho’s shirt he can move again, but he’s trapped inside the rope circle. The air around the boundary of the circle is cool and pliant, like pressing on the inner surface of a thick bubble.

The ghost heaves and thrashes inside him, reacting to the fresh return of the nyx’s energy.

Mingi turns to check on him, then swings back to the stranger. “Yejun, what the fuck.”

He’s heard the name before, but it takes him a moment to remember. Roses, he thinks. Hive bees. Minnie. He’s Minnie’s ex.

“I can’t believe you took out the ghost, I really thought she’d deliver. I paid a fucking arm and a leg for her.” Yejun’s heart-shaped mouth quirks up in a rueful smile. “You probably won’t believe me, but I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this. This is going to be so much messier.” 

He's wearing a court sword and knife, decorated with filigree and gilt but quite, quite functional. He moves restlessly just outside the rope line of Mingi’s circle. “My friend the nyx mentioned you had help, but I’d put all my money on that bitch taking you both down.”

He drifts towards Yunho’s prison like he’s got all night. If they’re lucky, he’s got maybe half an hour before the ghost tears her way back out and kills them all.

“So this is your Lowtown hero.” He’s close enough to see the pastry crumbs on his cheeks, smell the meat on his breath. Yejun has been sitting down here having a little midnight picnic while he waited for them. 

He inspects Yunho, dark eyes full of malice. “You don’t look like much of a hunter. But I suppose that’s the point.”

 _I’ll give you a fucking point._ Yunho drops the bone knife down his sleeve to palm the blade. Maybe the barrier won’t stop it passing through. Maybe he’ll get to find out if this shitclown comes just a little closer.

But if he manages to put him to sleep or knife him and they’re still stuck in the circles, they’re screwed. Think, _hells_. 

What if there’s a way to dismantle the runework from inside the bubble?

“You’ve got no fight with him,” says Mingi urgently, pressed close to what must be the wall of his own invisible cell. “This isn’t about him, it’s about me.”

A flinch of fury crosses Yejun’s face before it settles back into a smirk. “Oh, they could write that on your gravestone. ‘Song Mingi: it’s all about me’.” His hand drops to caress the hilt of his sword and Yunho feels a cold rush of adrenaline.

“Let him go, Yejun,” Mingi says. “Whatever I’ve done, he’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Whatever you’ve done?” His hand tightens convulsively on the sword hilt and he swings around to face the poet. “Unbelievable. _Really_?”

“It’s not about Rope-of-Stars, I’m guessing.”

“Why would it be about Rope-of-Stars? The other courts come and go, that’s minor shit. Listen, Mingi, I know you wreck a lot of lives in the course of a day, but think back. You know what you’ve done.”

Mingi’s voice is flat, eyes considering. “Minnie.”

“Yes, there you go.” Yejun stops his pacing. “Minnie. Yes.”

“You treated her like shit and she left you.”

“No, you _talked_ to her and she left me.” 

Yunho can’t touch the rope, can’t touch the runes tied onto it. Doesn’t know how the barrier works; combat runework against the living has never been his thing. But the nyx’s spells feel like some sort of weird hybrid between combat runes and ghost spells. Maybe….. maybe he can work with that.

Mingi’s still arguing with Yejun. “She didn’t exactly need a push to go. She was just looking for a friend to talk to.”

“Bullshit. You told her lies about me. Poisoned her against me.”

Mingi catches his eyes again, checking on him. _Distract him_ , he sends urgently. He takes the risk of flashing the edge of the knife, spins a finger in the air. Keep him talking. Got a plan. Mingi’s eyes shift back to Yejun; he’s got the best poker face when he wants to. Yunho loves him so _fiercely_ in that moment.

“Yejun, thing is, I didn’t even need to lie to talk shit about you.”

Yunho tunes out Yejun’s answering snarl. He breathes deep to centre himself against the noise and struggle of the ghost. Breathes out slowly. Calm as he’s going to get.

He brushes the barrier with the knife. Immediately, he can feel the nyx’s spells working through the membrane. It’s similar to runes on paper, but buried somehow in the air, like they’re wrapping the air around them. They’re strongest at the floor, energy rising from the runes around the rope. As quietly as he can, he stretches up high, patting at the top of the barrier.

A glance at Yejun tells him Mingi’s still goading him; all his attention is fixed on the poet. His body language is screaming rage, voice spiralling upwards in pitch, even though he’s clearly trying to keep his voice down to avoid anyone on the lower levels of the court coming up to find out what’s happening. 

That’s my boy, _genius_ level annoyance. If he can just manage not to push it too far. Keep him talking, not using that sword.

The barrier goes up beyond his reach. He needs to unpick those runes somehow. They’re running through the inside of the barrier, like fuel. Maybe if he can get inside that layer where they’re hidden?

He needs fresh blood. He pulls the bandage off his arm and uses the backing of the butterfly clip to scrape blood from the knife slash, just enough that he can smear it across his fingertips. He’ll use the knife in his left hand, so Hongjoong’s runes don’t play hook-up with the nyx again. He grips the knife tight and sends up a quick prayer to anyone who might be listening. 

The nyx’s power buzzes louder at him under the dual touch of blood and knife. They’re so close, just a thin membrane separating them. He just needs to…. push.

The blade slides into the barrier wall like he’s cutting open a fruit. A little bit of give, then a smooth slide through. Energy spills out, washing over the blade, running up his hands. It’s the colour of emeralds, of a carpet of poisonous plants on the surface of a swamp. He manages to gasp in one clear lungful of air before it swarms around him in a stinging cloud, clinging to his wrists. The ghost kicks back at it frantically from inside him, clawing to get away through his skin. 

He’s on the ground, scrambling as far as he can go from the wash of energy but it winds around him, holding him fast, even though he’s dropped the knife.

He must be making a noise because Yejun’s turned around now. That’s funny, Yunho thinks, dizzy with pain. Yejun’s got the poker face now, head cocked to one side, watching him. But Mingi’s face is full of feelings all of a sudden. Fear. Love. He’s on his knees, pressed up against the barrier as close as he can get to Yunho.

Yejun wanders over. “Look at that, Mingi, your hunter’s going under. I don’t actually want him to die, though. He’ll free the ghost, and while it may be entertaining I don’t want to be here to see it happen. He’s Lowtown, but there’ll still be questions.”

_If I die we’re both going to fucking haunt you._

He can feel the broken barrier, ruptured at the split he made, but he can’t do anything about it anymore. Every breath brings a fresh wave of that stinging, toxic energy inside. He grits his teeth against the growing pressure from outside and within. Locks his jaw to keep from letting the pain out. The ghost cries and scrabbles.

“The nyx wanted me to bring the hunter to him,” says Yejun. “But you know what? I’m willing to let him go. You’re right, he’s not the problem here. I just need you to do something for me first.” 

Yejun pulls the court knife from its sheath, turns it so that the blade catches the light. “When this all started, I wanted to take your poetry away from you, like you took Minnie away from me. Breaking your hand seemed like a fun place to start. But the more I listen to you, Mingi, the more I realise. I’m just fucking sick of listening to you talk.”

Mingi’s crouched down, breathing steadily with Yunho, not letting him look away. “Tell me what you want to let him go.”

_I’m not leaving you. Not going anywhere._

Mingi shakes his head as if he can sense the thought. He strokes the barrier between them, flattens his palm against it.

“How about this.” Yejun holds the knife out, hilt first. “You cut out your tongue. Then he’s free to go. You don’t do it, and we all stay here and wait for the ghost to do this the slow way.”

Yejun has such a look on his face, like even he can’t quite believe what he’s doing. He’s not going to back down, though. He’s having too much fun. Yunho’s seen that face on the maggies.

Mingi gets to his feet slowly and holds out a hand for the knife. Yunho wants to yell at him to stop but he can’t force enough air into his lungs and it comes out as a choking gasp. 

Yejun doesn’t even look at him. “The hunter dies, it’s a problem. But you, losing your tongue? That’s justice.” He smiles. “You think anyone’s going to defend you at court? Against me? Nobody likes you very much, Mingi. You’ve made sure of that.”

Yunho slams his hand against the barrier, but Mingi doesn’t respond.

“If I do this,” he says, “you have to let him go. On your family’s honour. Right after. And you,” he looks at Yunho. Incredibly, he manages a flinch of his mouth that could be an attempt at a smile. “You have to go. I need you to do that, okay? I need you to be alright.” There’s so much love in his eyes.

“On my family’s honour.” Yejun sounds avid. He was clearly lying, earlier. Messy is exactly how he wants this.

The poet glances at him, knife held awkwardly in his one working hand, and raises it to his mouth. He’s going to butcher himself using the wrong hand. And there’s no guarantee Yejun will be able to stop what he’s started after Yunho leaves.

Mingi turns away from Yunho at the last moment. 

He flinches suddenly, the knife recoiling from his face. There’s a dark spot on his hand - blood? But then it moves, lifting into the air lazily. A spark? Yunho hears the hum of wings, a familiar drone.

Hivesong. The house-god is here.

The red Hive bee wheels through the air, spiraling over Yejun. He’s so intent on Mingi that he reacts to what’s happening just slightly too late. He takes a swing at the bee and it dances out of his reach as if teasing him. Then in a blur of wings it lands on his cheek and before he has the chance to slap it away, it sinks in the delicate arc of its sting. He raises one shaky hand to his cheek as the bee falls in a curl of legs and wings.

There’s a drop of dark venom beading on his cheek that wells up as Yunho watches. Yejun smears it, looking wildly at Mingi as if for help.

His eyes are already starting to glaze over as he gropes for his sword, stumbling towards Mingi. He drops in a clumsy heap just outside the rope circle.

Yunho presses up against the barrier, trying to keep his eyes on Mingi, who is back down at floor level with him again. He’s still shackled by the green energy flooding from the broken barrier. A painful pressure is eating away at his vision from the outsides in and the insides out. The ghost rises in his throat like he’s swallowed broken stones. 

The short gap between their hands feels like a hole he could fall into and never manage to climb out of. Things fade in and out. The bee wanders past again, but no, it’s still dead on the floor. Another bee, the colour of dried blood. A silver-gold bee, joining it.

 _They’re dancing_ , he thinks. The floor is as cold as a well. Things fade back out. The ghost’s fear pulses away in the dark.

He blinks, opening his eyes as the green ropes around his wrist unravel with a sullen hiss. Was he sleeping? The floor’s so cold and hard, why’s he sleeping here? 

The maggie’s here, Mingi’s friend with the white streak in his hair. No, not his friend. Nobody makes friends with maggies. 

He’s pulled the rope apart, broken up the nyx’s barriers. He crouches down next to Yunho, examining him with gentle hands. There’s a birthmark on his face. No, it’s a bee. Hivesong. Crawling across his cheekbone.

“How are you feeling?”

Now the nyx’s gone, he can breathe, at least. He tries to fill his lungs but the ghost doesn’t want him to. He’s got very little time left. She’s close. She wants the air and light for herself.

“Let me out, San!” Mingi’s voice nearby is a warning growl. The maggie tugs the rope from around him and suddenly Mingi is wrapped around him, holding him too tightly but he doesn’t care. “He needs to get rid of the ghost!”

“He’s caught it?” It’s a new voice. Female. Someone he knew, once? 

As he blinks, the blur of shadow and light beyond Mingi resolves into a small, compact woman with an angular face and silver-blonde hair cut razor sharp at jaw level. Bees hang in the air around her, travelling across skin the colour of pale honey. Something dangerous simmers in her dark eyes as she crouches down with them, focused on something on the ground.

Carefully, she picks up the curled body of the dead Hive bee. She holds it out, resting on her palm. There’s a coiled look of anger about her as she considers Mingi.

He knows you’re supposed to do something when the Queen arrives. He tries to get up, but Mingi’s arms tighten around him.

“He’s got her for now. He said he couldn’t hold her for long.”

“Do you know where he needs to take her?”

Yunho pushes the words out. “Seonghwa. Bird’s house. On the Crescent.”

Soyeon glances at San, who nods. “I know him.”

“Okay, hand him over,” she says to Mingi. Her tone brooks no argument but because he’s Mingi, he tries anyway.

“I’m taking him to Lowtown.”

“You’re staying here.” She stares him down, over the corpse of the Hive bee. “And you’re going to start by telling me all the things you’ve been hiding from me that led us to this.” She curls her fingers over the bee, as if to protect it. Far too late. “But what I really need to hear is how you’re planning to pay Hivesong back for her sacrifice. I have some ideas.” Her smile is like a slap to his face. “You probably won’t like them.”

 _You’re ours_ , is what Yunho hears. _We own you. Body and soul._

But maybe that was always the case. He can’t fight Hivesong. 

Mingi, unbelievably, is still holding him close. “He can barely walk. Just let me take him to the boats.”

“San can take him.” The look she gives the maggie is distinctly unimpressed. Yunho wonders what San’s punishment will be for hiding something like this from her.

“What about him?” San nudges Yejun with one foot. 

“He’s not dead,” says Soyeon. “Yet. We’ll see.”

Yunho gets up with help, Mingi lifting him and San stepping in to take his weight. He tries to make his bow to the Queen but the ghost scrabbles him off balance. Mingi has already moved away. It’s only San’s arm under his that keeps him upright. 

Soyeon dismisses them both. “Go on, get him where he needs to go. Then come back and find me.”

Mingi’s back to the poker face. It’s the arrogant, bored expression that’s his real court mask, like he’s waiting for a not-very-promising party to get started. He’s not looking at Yunho. His good hand drifts down to his side, sketching a shape in the air. There’s a flutter of his fingers that Yunho takes a moment to recognize.

 _Aura_. It’s what Mingi does when he talks about auras.

When he drops into second sight, Mingi's aura whirls around him, what’s left of it. It’s all wild chaos, like a torn banner in a fierce wind. It’s anything but calm, anything but neutral. Where it meets his aura they thread over and through each other like old friends. Like lovers. 

_I’ll be there with you._ It’s what he’s saying.

Mingi wanted him to see this, to see the one place they can still touch while Hivesong claws them apart once again. 

Problem is, that second-hand hug, Mingi’s fiery energy holding him up and holding him close, it’s so beautiful - _you’re_ beautiful - but it’s not enough. 

It’s not nearly enough for him anymore.

________________

Later, he remembers little of the trip across the lake. 

The sound of the water rushing by under the bow of the boat is soothing. He lays his head on the side of the boat and doesn’t move until they’re tied up at the dock and San is helping him out. 

The smell of damp earth at the side of the lake makes his stomach heave for a moment, but it’s just the ghost’s memories starting to seep into his. He finds he can walk, if he focuses on taking one step after another. He leans on San’s arm when the roadway gets muddy and uneven.

Luckily, Seonghwa lives just around the lakeshore on the Crescent, where Lowtown rises up to meet the lake. His house-god, Bird, likes to look across to Hivesong. He thinks maybe the Swarm visits Bird, sometimes. 

Bird’s no ordinary house-god. He’s ancient and mercurial, and he’s powerful enough that he could have had a court like Hivesong. Instead, he chooses to live in Lowtown, with a single shrinekeeper - Seonghwa - for company. He spends his time ferrying ghosts on to their final home, amongst other mysterious errands. 

The streets of the Crescent are softly lit with coloured light wards strung from tree to tree. Although there are few people about this late at night - and the Crescent is usually pretty quiet - he’s glad of San’s solidity next to him, and not just for balance. He’s not worth shit at the moment if anyone wants to start something. Kinda funny to think he’s looking to a maggie to protect him. Things change. People… surprise you.

There’s a lamp shining over the door to Bird’s large wooden guesthouse. _Thank you, Jongho._ Seonghwa’s left the front door unlatched, as arranged. He leans a hand on the door knocker - a green parrot with flashes of scarlet under its wings - for luck, for greeting. Hey, Bird. Look on us kindly. Last stop.

Bird likes to play with the interior of the house. He’s been known to add extra rooms and floors when he’s feeling expansive, or wants his song to reach across the lake to Hivesong. Thankfully, he seems to sense Yunho’s need and there’s only one set of stairs to scale today. 

They’re dark and narrow, though, and he rests for a moment at the bottom, feeling the tiled floor sway underneath him. 

San eyes the stairs and eyes him. Before he can protest, the maggie has insinuated himself under Yunho and is pulling him forwards to drape over his shoulder. He’s stronger than he looks, although the height difference is awkward on the sloping stairs. Yunho loops his arms across San’s neck and tries to keep on his feet.

Seonghwa must have heard their noisy progression up the stairs. He’s waiting at the top when they get there. He looks so calm and his smile is so welcoming that Yunho wants to hug him. And maybe Seonghwa senses that, because he takes Yunho’s weight from San, and lets him lean close. He’s here. They made it. 

Bird must _really_ love him today; the inner shrine is just off the landing. They’ve had to track it down before, when Bird was feeling particularly playful. But here it is, the one room in the house that always looks the same. 

It’s a long, narrow wood-paneled room, with arched windows that look out towards the lake. The dark, heavy furniture has red upholstery and everything always smells faintly like the nuts and seeds that Bird scatters everywhere, despite how clean the place is. 

Seonghwa helps him lie down on the couch by the fire, under the constellations painted onto the dark ceiling. Just being under them relaxes him, even as the ghost kicks under his skin. She knows she’s going home. 

Seonghwa crouches down beside him. He smiles as he smooths back Yunho’s sweaty hair.

“Ready?”

San stirs behind them. “Would it be okay if I stayed? They’ll want to know if he’s alright.”

Seonghwa’s pleasant expression doesn’t change, but he knows enough about Yunho’s past to know how he feels about maggies. His brows raise slightly in question, and Yunho gives him a small nod. He knows Seonghwa would get rid of San if he asked, but he’s grateful for his help. Besides, right now the maggie is the only one who can tell Mingi he’s safe. 

The shrinekeeper’s voice is civil. “Stay out of the way, and keep quiet.”

He unbuttons Yunho’s shirt so that he can lay his hand across the heart rune, right over the ghost. His fingers are cold but the ghost stills under his touch like a trapped animal. She’s so tired of fighting, he can feel it. She just wants to lie down and forget.

Yunho’s eyes flicker shut as Seonghwa starts to sing a soft call to Bird. It sounds like a lullaby, or a love song, but the words aren’t in any language he recognizes. It’s Bird’s own language, taught to Seonghwa so that he can sing the ancient songs that the house-god loves best. 

The song always drops Yunho into a deep sleep, as if the words have some sort of old enchantment on them, or perhaps Bird’s arrival is too mysterious for him to stay awake for. He feels like a kid who can’t quite stay up all night for the full moon festival, and sacks out on someone’s lap instead, tucked under their coat.

The sweet sound of the shrinekeeper’s husky voice follows him down into dreamless sleep.

____________

  
  


When he wakes up, he’s free of the ghost. 

Or maybe she’s free of him. She’s gone, at last.

His chest feels both achingly empty and blessedly quiet of anything other than the steady thump of his heart. He lies there, snuggled under a blanket Seonghwa must have put over him, too relaxed to move just yet.

He inhales the smells of frying beef and something sweet and minty. Breakfast. 

Early morning sunlight paints the couch by the window a dusty red. San has gone, leaving a neat pile of Yunho’s belongings behind. The tattered remnants of a ward. His bone blade. 

Seonghwa is busy cooking something with elegant efficiency over the shrine’s tiny portable stove, and there’s a mug of something hot sitting next to Yunho on a side table.

He sits up slowly, folding the blanket around him and takes a sip. The mint is soothing on his throat. 

He hears the creaking in the roof that is Bird, shifting his bulk in the hidden nest that he’s made for himself above the shrine. 

_Thank you, Bird. Thanks for seeing her home_.

The second sight comes slowly to him today, exhausted as he is. The mismatched blend of colours look muted and there’s ghost-sign all over. Even the necromancer’s vivid green looks dull underneath it. He holds out a hand, flares Mingi’s coppery crimson-violet over his fingers. It’s a faint heat on his skin, like a distant memory of touch. He lets the sight slide away, already tired, and curls his fingers around the cup for warmth.

_________________

When he heads home for a proper sleep, Jongho’s working at the front desk, buried in study notes, like he never left. But it’s Jongho, too, notoriously wary of physical contact, who pulls him into a bearish hug when he stumbles in that morning. His dark eyes gloss over silver and he raises his brows at the mess of Yunho’s aura, but says nothing.

The money Mingi paid them, they spend on supplies for more wards. Once he’s back up to speed, Yunho pulls a couple of all-nighters catching up with the orders that have come in while he was away. They’re not starving for business; looks like Lowtown has decided to give him a pass for hanging out at the court. 

They don’t see anyone from court, but a small additional payment makes its way to them, in a paper envelope smelling of roses. He wonders if it’s from Minnie, or maybe it’s the Queen’s way of thanking him for getting rid of the ghost. No way to tell.

It goes quickly enough on paper and ink.

After a week or so, his aura has finally shed the nyx’s corruption and he feels cleaner, more whole. Hongjoong’s painting flakes off as predicted, shedding all over the inside of his shirt like fine black river sand. Mingi’s energies cling more fiercely. The same day he wakes up to find the last of them gone, he hears that Mingi has left Hivesong for another court. Rumour says Rope-of-Stars. 

They say that Queen Soyeon has forgiven him. That this is a mark of her favour, the wheel slowly on its upwards arc again, carrying the poet to fresh new fame.

He visits Hongjoong to talk about the business offer he mentioned. The runesmith wants to join their two small businesses, all four of them offering a service of wards and charms, runes and ghosthunting, out of Aurora. He’ll be able to hand over most of the ward work to Yeosang, and start properly training Jongho up as a hunter when he graduates. 

Yunho and Jongho decide to accept the offer. Yunho also agrees to look after Aurora while Hongjoong leaves to take care of some old business that he’s not so keen to discuss. Yunho thinks that maybe he’s going after the nyx, but when he offers his help, Hongjoong just smiles and asks him to take care of everyone while he’s gone. He vanishes one night, without saying goodbye.

They only find out that Seonghwa is gone as well when Yeosang is called to tend on Bird in his absence. 

Spring is just starting its slide into summer when Mingi returns to Hivesong. He’s travelling back with Moonbyul, one of the Queens from Rope-of-Stars. There’s a celebration planned for her welcome, a party on the lake with music and fireworks for Lakeside and Lowtown alike. Which is to say, the musicians will be on the lakeside and the fireworks over Hivesong, but Lowtown will turn out on Dock Hill and the music will carry well enough over the water. Rumour - a fickle bitch that Yunho is learning to hate - says that Song Mingi will perform at Hivesong for the first time since his fall from grace.

The night of the performance, he goes drinking at his local. It’s almost empty; everyone’s down by the lake getting plastered under the stars. Jongho takes one look at his face and decides to meet friends at the lake. Yeosang is planning a quiet night in, finishing a commission of nursery wards. Fireworks give him headaches.

Yunho has his choice of seats at the Double Knot, for once. He sits in a dark booth at the back of the room, just so he can avoid Jisung, the barman on tonight. Normally he likes to chat to him, but not right now. He’s super talkative, and just a little too shrewd. Besides, the booth’s warm funk of spilled beer and stale smoke suits his mood tonight.

Someone’s left a used-up glamour crumpled in the booth cushions. He fishes it out and smooths it down. Huh, red hair. He wonders how he’d look with red hair. 

Mingi looked good with red hair. 

Nope, he’s got a mission. There are four bottles in front of him, and he’s going to drink until he’s no longer thinking about red hair, blue hair, kingfisher hair, or any other glamour he’s seen on Song fucking Mingi. 

Like the seas follow the moon, my _ass_. 

He lays his head down on the table. He trusts him. That’s the problem. He fucking trusts him for some ridiculous reason, and so instead of being able to move on like a smart boy, it just keeps hurting.

“It doesn’t work, if you just retreat,” he says, clinking one bottle off another in a toast. He screws up the glamour and wedges it into the empty bottle. “You have to return too, asshole.” 

“I just about cut out my tongue for you.” Mingi falls into the seat across from him, grinning. His hair is ash blonde, shaved fiercely short at the sides. He’s in stage makeup, with dark smoky eyes and glossy pink mouth. There’s a tiny heart inked onto his cheek, over the mole there. “The least you could do is give me a month or so to get shit sorted, especially since your shop moved. Took me time to track Yeosang down tonight.”

Yunho pulls himself up off the table, heart hammering. “I thought you were performing?”

“I was. It was my farewell performance. You should have come along, it was very moving. I couldn’t get Soyeon to cry, but I think I saw Minnie welling up.”

“You’re leaving?” _Again?_

Mingi lays his hand on the table beside Yunho’s, almost close enough to touch. “I’m leaving Hivesong. Got a new gig, working for Rope-of-Stars.” Improbably, he’s still grinning. “It’s based in Lowtown. I’ll be working round here, in fact. Just got to scout some offices.”

It takes a moment to register. Relief sweeps through him, so strongly he has to put down the bottle as his hand starts to shake in reaction.

“You’re leaving Hivesong?”

He nods. “Soyeon’s not happy with me. She sent me to Rope-of-Stars to do damage control, since I was the one that screwed things up with the ambassador. It was meant to be a punishment. I did manage to get everything more or less back on track, though.”

“And they offered you a job?”

“They offered me a job. Some sort of trade liaison to Lowtown, I dunno. I’ll make it up as I go along.” He grins at Yunho, inviting him to share the joke. “Apparently there’s going to be a lot of talking involved, and they like the way I talk.”

“The Queen’s just going to let you walk away?” It’s in the back of his head, the Old King’s threat. _Be a good boy, Song Mingi._ The Queen’s different, everyone keeps saying, but... Hivesong is Hivesong. “Secrets and all?”

“She doesn’t have a choice. The Swarm backed me up when I told her I’d had enough. Sneaky fuckers.” His face is bland, a faint warning not to ask. There’s something there, some history that he may never hear about. And maybe that’s okay. Hivesong can keep its ghosts, as long as it’s willing to unhook its claws from Mingi. “Underneath it all, though, I think she gets it. I think she’s got a heart, somewhere under the chain mail and the spiked armour and the band of knives. Minnie always said so.”

Mingi’s rambling now, playing with the empty bottle, twirling it back and forth. His bandages are off; tiny pale scars run along three of the fingers. He’s not looking at Yunho anymore. Interesting. Yunho waits, patient, like his heart isn’t about to climb out of his throat.

“Turned out she was playing nice at First Nectar, too. That memory, you asked me what it was? She was actually trying to get people into a happier mood. Make the party fun.” His mouth quirks upwards. He’s definitely not looking at Yunho. “It was a memory of first love. Funny story, Minnie was the one sent it over, hoping it would make you think of her. I told her she was kidding herself, but I guess we’ll never know.” Mingi clears his throat. “And anyway, I got it instead.” 

The hesitant tone of his voice makes Yunho’s heartbeat kick up another notch. He’s choosing his words with visible care, Song Mingi, who is never lost for something to say. This is important to him - whatever _this_ is. He hopes he knows. Not looking at Mingi’s aura is driving him crazy, but he wants to do this fairly. Mingi doesn’t have that advantage.

“So, ah, anyway. I just wanted to give you something.”

The poet pulls something from his pocket and places it carefully on the table between them. It’s a twisted ornament of wire and red paper, about the size of his thumb. Yunho picks it up, turns it over. It’s sitting on a pin backing, so it can be worn as a badge. There are two looping ears - maybe? No, they’re wings. Antennae?

“It’s a butterfly?” he asks, unsure. Mingi seems to like them, but this one… it’s kind of homely. “If this is a souvenir from Rope-of-Stars, yeah, they really need your trade advice.”

“It’s from a little bit further back than that. This - this was what I remembered, that night.” He takes it back, holding it as if it’s made of gold and jewels instead of scraps of paper and wire. “Do you remember Ugly Butterfly Club?”

Yunho badly wants to say yes, because it’s obviously important, but whatever it is, it’s buried down deep, like his failed poem. “Sorry.” 

Mingi smiles. “It’s okay, I’m not surprised. It was First Nectar, a few years back now, and you were pretty drunk. I was just pretending, the way I did. Keeping safe. You were so pissed off at me that night, can’t even remember what we were fighting about. I probably said something stupid.”

“What are the odds?” Mingi was never great at keeping quiet when he had something to say, and there had been plenty of arguments that sprang up like wildfires out of nowhere. Especially after he’d joined the council, and his temper got more unpredictable. The fights never lasted for long, though. Neither of them were any good at grudges.

“I was giving you some space, hanging out in the gardens, and you came and found me. You wanted to give me this. You were very insistent that I needed to have it.”

“Wow, that was kind of me. I bet you really valued my thoughtfulness.” He can see his own clumsy workmanship in it, now. It looks like the kind of thing he used to tinker with, something to keep his hands busy when his head was too full. And his head _had_ been full back then. 

“You said it was my badge and that you were making me a member of the Ugly Butterfly Club. You were so fucking serious, it was adorable. You said something like, everyone starts out as ugly caterpillars, and then some people turn into beautiful butterflies when they grow up, but some people just turn into ugly butterflies and that’s okay too. Because we didn’t need to be pretty and amazing all the time.”

His voice is gentle with the memory. “You said that I could be a complete asshole and I’d still be in the club. That I _was_ a complete asshole, but it was okay. Still in the club.”

He wished he remembered this, but it’s still a blank. The look in Mingi’s eyes, though. That’s something else.

“I asked you who was in Ugly Butterfly Club, and you said it was just us, nobody else was allowed to join, they were too beautiful. Then you called me an asshole again - you were giggling quite a lot by then - and fell asleep on my lap.”

Mingi’s first love. He was Mingi’s first love.

“I just wanted you to know how I felt. Feel. It wasn’t always pretty, what was in my head back then, and it still isn’t. You’re right, I _am_ an asshole, sometimes. But you always made me feel like I was good enough, even when everything inside and out felt ugly. Like I didn’t even have to do anything special, and you’d still. Um.”

“Love you?” offers Yunho. “It’s not a free pass, but yeah. I love you.” He’s feeling so lightheaded with happiness and relief and he wants to help him, because Mingi’s overthinking things, as usual. He’s going to wind up talking himself out of this, not letting himself have anything nice, if he keeps going. Dumbass. 

So Yunho holds up his hand, even though Mingi hasn’t said anything since his declaration. To be fair, he’s been _not_ saying it very loudly. “Okay, that’s enough talking. I’ve made a decision. Clearly, there’s a need. I’m reconvening the club. Ugly Butterfly Club is in session.”

He reaches over and pins the badge on the front of Mingi’s shirt, hands shaking a little despite himself as his knuckles brush over smooth skin. Feels like the pounding of his heart must be visible, it’s so strong. He risks a look up at the poet’s face, so close to his. Mingi’s watching him, so still that he’s barely breathing.

The tiny heart inked on his cheekbone has antennae, he realises. It’s actually a tiny butterfly. He wants to kiss it. He _will_ kiss it, but first things first.

When the badge is sitting right, he takes hold of Mingi’s shirt, gently but firmly, and pulls the poet towards him, over the table. The bottles go over and he just manages to catch the open one before Mingi’s kissing him with all of his considerable skill, all hot mouth and clever, so clever tongue. And love, he can feel that there as well. So much love.

Kissing’s like another language, and Yunho believes that he might have a lot to say. At length. With follow-up for questions. When Mingi pulls away, he’s tempted to follow him across the table to keep going. But they have time, now. Incredibly. They have time.

“So you love me, huh?” Unbelievably, Mingi looks smug. Flushed, bright-eyed, soft… and annoyingly smug, with that familiar, shit-eating grin. Mingi takes his hand, threading his long fingers through Yunho’s. “I always knew you were my biggest fan.” 

“Please,” says Yunho. “You are so whipped for me, Ugly Butterfly.”

And just to test the theory - because he likes to be thorough - he lifts Mingi’s hand and presses a soft kiss into the palm, watching him under his eyelashes all the while. Watches as Mingi loses that smirk; the soft, breathy noise he makes, mid-way between a whine and a sigh.

Song Mingi, rendered wordless.

It’s promising. This - this is going to be fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can reach me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/nelliedae) to chat about Ateez or writing whenever! I hope you enjoyed this and I'm really hoping to throw myself into some follow-up stories. Got several ideas brewing! Thank you so very much for reading if you made it this far <3


End file.
